Sunday, April 01, 2007

Viking Boat, L'Anse aux Meadows

Photography Lesson - Viking Boat

I was looking at photos of L'Anse aux Meadows and thought that a discussion of how I took today's images might be useful to some of the people on this list.

People often ask how I can take so many photos in a short period of time. I hardly ever take only one photograph of anything. The three images that follow were taken in less than one minute. I was using a 17-40 mm lens, so I knew that I could get pretty close to the boat in order to emphasize its interesting shape. Kneeling down helped to emphasize the shape even more. I zoomed in to remove as much of the background as I could, then took the first photograph. By removing the background, I am forcing the viewer to look at the boat's shape.



Eleven seconds later, I had zoomed back to give me the widest angle. The boat now seems longer in the front, and a little narrower. More of the background is now visible, but the boat is still the dominant subject.


I walked around and took a photo of the boat while looking in the opposite direction. This time I decided to include the paddles, part of the Viking house and the fence.



Even though these photos are similar, each shows something different about the boat. The first two concentrate on the boat's shape rather than it's location. The third provides more information about location: its proximity to the house, the size of the village and fenced yards, the lack of trees in the area, and the type of oars Vikings used.


I took 31 photos of this boat during my visit to the Viking site in L'Anse aux Meadows. If I were shooting slides (I haven't taken a roll in 5 years), I probably would have taken 2 - 3 rolls of 36 frames - around 100 photos at a cost of $80. With my digital camera, I took 250 photos of the village and its people in the two hour visit. That day, I took a total of 627 photos. At no cost for film!
PHOTO HINT! Take lots of photos! Especially if you are using a digital camera. Try different angles and you will "see" that things don't look the same even if you are looking at the same subject.


If you would like to see other photos from my L'Anse aux Meadows Galleries go to - VIKING GALLERIES


EVERYTHING'S A PICTURE

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