chuckography: "Wait for a break in traffic..."

Tuesday, October 06, 2020

"Wait for a break in traffic..."

A few years ago, I bought a newer version of a Canon P/S (a camera called a Point and Shoot) that was light, compact, and small enough to slip into your shirt pocket.

A buddy showed me how to attach a circular holder on the front of my new Canon S90 so I could experiment using various lens filters.

When shooting black & white, a yellow filter makes a blue sky darker and clouds stand out more. A Polaroid one lessens glare as you rotate it, say reflections on the water.

The Neutral Density (ND) filter comes in a wide range of degrees of darkness, sort of like putting sunglasses on the camera.

I have used all of these but the most fun was attaching a very dark ND filter so I could slow down the shutter speed to several seconds and take sharp photos on a very bright sunny day.

Then I positioned my camera on a sturdy tripod and looked down on a typical busy San Diego Freeway from atop the Cabrillo Bridge leading into the beautiful Balboa Park.

Cars are speeding along, almost bumper to bumper below me, BUT the camera's slow shutter speed only captures something that stays still for several seconds.

A shorter exposure would show blurred images but this filter and shutter speed setting presents a completely empty roadway!

In the middle of the day, on a wide-open, multi-laned California freeway ..... zero cars. An impossible scene., but, there's the photo.

Closer to home, with less ND filter and slightly faster settings, I merely slowed down the waves to show the smooth ebb and flow of the white water sloshing and retreating on the rocks, looking out at the iconic Morris Island lighthouse at Charleston's Folly Beach in South Carolina, my hometown.