Category: equipment

Trip Checklist

This is a series of posts with translation of my interview published in Russian at http://landscapists.info/vitaly-prokopenko. The question from the interview: “You travel a lot. Could you tell a little bit about organizing your trips: how do you prepare for a trip, how much time it takes?”

It depends on how far I travel. If it is somewhere close by car, I almost always have everything in the car. I can without additional preparation just go somewhere for weekend. (After my son was born I need to discuss with my wife ahead of time if I want to travel somewhere.)

If I travel farther away by plane (alone or with my family), preparations take a week or longer. It is typically include the following (always in the order below:

  1. Study the place I’m going to. What to expect in terms of photography. I look at photographs of the destination made by other photographers, read travel guides, study terrain from satellite photos. For example, if it is near the ocean, what’s the ocean shore line is like, interesting rocks, where I’ll be able to walk to the shore.
  2. Decide what to take (if flying by plane, if going by car I take everything). Since there is a limit on carry on and lately I also need to carry my son’s belongings (and sometimes my son himself), I try to take a bare minimum. I make compromises without doubt. For example, I’ll leave macro lenses at home and take macro filter instead to use on another lenses, or don’t take lenses for some focal length.
  3. Sunset and sunrise times. What can get into the sun way during sunrise or sunset, can it be blocked by mountains, do I need to get to higher elevation. Moonrise and moonset times. Tide table – especially important if some parts of the shore are crossable only during low tide.
  4. Cleaning up equipment: cleaning sensor on camera, cleaning lenses and filter. Charging batteries.

How long have I been photographing? How did I start?

This is a series of posts with translation of my interview published in Russian at http://landscapists.info/vitaly-prokopenko.

It depends on what point to start count from. I was fascinated with photography on some subconscious level. Back in school I had an old rangefinder camera. Completely mechanical with manual exposure – no electronics at all. I developed film by myself, I made prints by myself. I still remember the scent of chemicals.

I remember my experiment with enlarging a photograph to a really big size. I put my enlarge on a side and projected the image from one end of 7 meter hall to the wall on the other end. On the wall I put letter size sheets of photo paper. The hardest thing was to develop those sheets exactly the same time to keep the same tonality. And I did not succeed on that. Different sheets ended up being darker or lighter. Despite that I enjoyed experimenting.

Later, in high school, my parents bought me more advanced camera – film SLR. It had electronic exposure metering! That was when I learnt my first lesson: not to trust tools. Since I started relying on exposure metering I did not get a single shot with a good exposure.

Still I would not say I did fine art photography in the school. After I entered a university I abandoned photography completely. There was no way I could setup a dark room in a dorm.

After post-graduation school I moved across an ocean to the US. I did not immediately started doing photography again. I traveled a lot, bought a simple digital camera and was taking some random snapshots which I have not even bothered to look at since then.

After a few years living in the US I noticed that I spent too much time working. I needed something that would take me away from work. I tried several hobbies and could not stop on anything.

At the same time my wife got into photography. She was the first we got a DSLR for. I thought about trying myself in landscape photography. I bought a tripod, started reading books and explore landscapes around. And I really like it. Photography has become part of my life that I cannot live without.

The Importance of a Routine

It is important to work out a routine of taking camera out of a backpack and putting it back. Routine will turn into habit that will ensure that nothing gets broken or lost over time.

I realized this after one incident while photographing in Yellow Stone National Park. One time I though I would leave my camera backpack open in the trunk of my car. I thought why bother opening it and closing every time I need to reach for a camera.

Then I was in hurry to catch a sunset and I completely forgot that I left my backpack opened. I needed to run to get a better angle for a shot. I quickly pulled the backpack out of the truck and threw it at my back.  That sent my DSLR and filters flying out of the backpack.

I was very lucky that time – my camera landed onto a level inserted into the camera hotshoe. The level was crushed but it saved the camera – it did not have any damage. Needless to say that I did not get any sunset shots that time.

That taught me an important lesson not to skip on important routine of packing camera after doing photography. The lesson cost was $25 – the cost of a new level.

I have similar routines for extending/collapsing tripod legs, placing camera on tripod, for placing and removing a filter, changing lenses. These routines are very important. Eventually they turn into habits that you do very mechanically, so you can focus more on photography instead of these small things.

First rule of shooting video for photographers

Do not turn camera vertically while shooting video even if the shot would be best composed vertically.

Point-and-shoot

Every tool has its reason and its purpose. While I enjoy DSLR for my fine art photography, a point-and-shoot camera is essential for a family vacation. For quite some time I’ve been using DSLR for both. Recently I’ve bought a point-and-shoot camera in addition to DSLR and I can say that I enjoy family vacation more now. First, I have to carry my son’s stuff and sometimes my son himself, additional weight and size of DSLR with lenses does not make it more enjoyable. Second, with point-and-shoot I can take pictures with one hand while holding my son’s ice cream in the other – can you do that with DSLR? Third, it fits into a pocket.

There are lots of other reasons why point-and-shoot is more appropriate for certain cases. I’m wondering why I did not buy such a great tool earlier.

Too bad we just lost it today in Disneyland. I don’t care as much for the camera as for the day worth of photographs of my family. If you happened to find a camera with someone looking like me in photos or know someone who did, could you send photos my way, please?

Fascination with Paper

I don’t know what is that between me and paper. I just like looking at paper, its smooth or rugged surface, feel it in my hands, think of photograph that look good on that paper, print it and look at it. Every time I go to a photo store I end up buying a sampler pack of some paper. Today I went to a photo store to buy lenses cleaning solution and end up with another sampler pack.

With inkjet printers we have a huge selection of all kinds of papers and surfaces to print our photos on. I have whole bunch of various inkjet paper at home. Some of it never even makes to printer – after studying it I realize that I don’t have the kind of photos that would look great on it. Sometimes I print on it just to realize that it does not work the way I expected. And other times I’m just wowed with the way the print looks.

My main medium is canvas. That’s what I use for most of the prints nowadays. Photo impressionism looks especially great on canvas. The rest of paper is just for fun – just because I’m fascinated with paper.