Spring has Sprung….Depth of Field

When I moved into my house on a lake in Denver, one of the pluses was this peach tree in the backyard.  The property manager told me that it hadn’t produced a single peach in over 10 years.  Then just before last summer they decided to prune it and see what would happen.  It produced so many peaches that it couldn’t hold up it’s own weight resulting in one of the big branches breaking off.  I’m looking forward to seeing what happens this year and if it’s a repeat of last year.  So far it looks like a good start to a tree that wants to do what it was designed to do……

I also wanted to answer a question about ‘depth of field’.  I’ve been asked literally 3 times in the past month about it so why not explain a little bit of it here.  “How do you make part of a picture blurry and part in focus, or the whole picture in focus for that matter?”  That’s what you would call depth of field.  As I was taking pics of the peach tree I was playing with my settings a bit in order to illustrate how it works.  In the above picture the flowers on the branch in the center of the picture are in focus, almost all of them.  The shot was taken at 1/640 sec at f/6.3 about 5 feet away at 70 mm.  There are several online calculators that can help you figure out your range.  For instance the calculation for the above image being roughly 5 feet away are:

Depth of field 
Near limit  4.73 ft
Far limit  5.3 ft
Total  0.57 ft

This next shot I opened up the aperture and shrunk my depth of field.  Same branch, only shot at 1/2000 sec at f/3.2 also at 70 mm.  The difference is very noticeable and you can start to see how playing with depth of field can really aid you as a photographer in getting the effect that you want in your image.

Depth of field 
Near limit  4.86 ft
Far limit  5.15 ft
Total  0.28 ft

Four days later I took this shot going in the other direction.  1/60 sec at f/16 at 58 mm.

Notice that much more is in focus in this shot and you can clearly see the branches in the back ground.  The calculation for these settings are:

Depth of field 
Near limit  4.14 ft
Far limit  6.32 ft
Total  2.19 ft

My range is much greater, meaning that the beginning distance from the camera that is in focus starts at 4.14 ft away and then it starts to go out of focus 6.32 ft away from the camera.  Thus giving you a depth of field that is 2.19 ft deep.

Long story short, making a very wide aperture with a fast shutter speed will give you a very shallow depth of field while making a very small aperture with a slow shutter speed will give you a very deep depth of field.

Hope that makes sense?

Back in Boston….

Over the winter my good friends Jeff & Nancy moved to a new loft right near South Station.  Part of the deal they got was that they had to renovate a lot of it and put in a good amount of sweat equity.  So when Jeff called me up and asked me to come out and give him a hand building a 20′ x 20′ roof deck around a skylight about 6 – 7 stories up, I said ‘Sure, why not!’

Denver is great and I truly am loving it out there, but I do miss Boston a bit, so this was the perfect opportunity to get back and catch up with some old friends and get to use my hands and build something again.  Win / Win if you ask me 😉

The decking is a hard Brazilian wood called Ipe.  The vibrant, deep red tones really make a gorgeous deck and turns the drab roof space that was there before into a place you’re thinking about kicking back and relaxing for a bit after a long day at work.

This last shot is the view from their roof deck towards the Chinatown Gate with Mars glowing above…….twilight.

 Can’t wait to get back for the first BBQ!  See you again soon!

The PD Armada

It started out as a harmless little trip to Deland to catch up with an old friend.  Next thing I knew I was on the phone with Karl from Performance Designs.  My harmless little trip to Deland turned into 3 full days of jumping and shooting out at Palatka.  You see Karl and I had been chatting before about working on a few projects together, one of them was to shoot every canopy in the PD line up, thus the PD Armada.  I was joined by Niklas Daniel and Lazlo.  We chased canopies across the sky and they chased us in turn.  It was good fun indeed!  Everything from the student Navigator to the Velocity, we shot 12 different canopies and gave all of our images to Scott from PD to work his magic and update their stock ads. Should be fun to see the updates that are made.

Here is a fun shot of me shooting Scott, shooting Karl, shooting Nik who is shooting all of us 😉

Looking forward to seeing where all of these shots pop up!  The funniest thing about this trip is that I believe this was my 6th or 7th time to Deland, and I have yet to actually make a skydive there.  Hehehe……Enjoy!  And thanks everyone for a great weekend and making it happen on such short notice!

Last chance for Canvas Sale….

Just a reminder, this is the last chance to take advantage of the discount on Gallery Wrapped Canvas.  My vendor is giving me a break and I’m passing it on to you.  So who knows when the next discount will be.  Contact me below if you’d like to place an order. 

Click here for discounted prices.   And thanks for reading!

We know it’s rude to stare……

I had been living in Denver for just over a month when the 2nd Annual SVCO Mountain Boogie got under way.   I bumped into some old friends I hadn’t seen in a while along with a few of my sponsors, Performance Designs and United Parachute Technologies.  While I was catching up with everyone, Nick from PD mentioned that he had a little project he needed help on.  They wanted to shoot a rising star jumper, Angela Pudnez with the PD Pulse canopy, did I have any ideas?  Having the space for my home studio picked out I said sure!  Of course ALL I had was the space, everything else was still in the works, no lighting, no backdrops, no props.  So I did what any photographer would do, I improvised. 

The results ended up in the two ads below.  Of course I like the second one more…..but can you blame me?!?!?  I think it was a good compromise of not crossing the line but still leaving something to the imagination.  Something that a company like PD can appreciate.

Look for the second ad in this month’s issue of Blue Skies Magazine.  I’m sure it will turn a few heads….

Never stop learning….

I guess that’s a general lesson in life. Never stop asking questions and never stop learning.  I’ve found that whether I’m learning something for the first time like learning to fly on my head in the windy room just south of Denver, or if I’m teaching a skill that I’ve had in my back pocket for a while to an old friend, just being able to share one of your passions in life and watching them soak it in is an amazing thing. Watching someone take that knowledge that you’ve put out there, process it, comprehend it, and put it into action is a rewarding experience to say the least.  Most of the time, you end up learning something just in the process of sharing.

So when the rains came in to Elsinore this weekend and the jumping was called for the day, we headed down to Dana Point and picked up the cameras.  Class was in session, and why not take it out onto the water? 

A quick spin around the harbor and we managed to catch a few paddle boarders out for a go.  Of course I chose to shoot the shooter 😉

AZ Money Meet…

Skydive Arizona held their annual Money Meet this past weekend with over 50 competitors.  While the turn out was great, the weather was not.  360 days of sun my ass…..ahem…..I mean it was a nice change to go to AZ and not get a fine layer of dust over all of my gear after just one jump. Even with the challenge of weather, we managed to get in 5 rounds and complete the meet.  Check out the full gallery here.

Of course when the rains came we had to run away from the DZ and found some interesting characters hanging out in the desert.  Aside from the skydivers of course…..Who knew….

A little slice of MY Denver…..

When I came to Denver to look for a new home, I had quite the experience.  After shaking hands and verbally committing on a place in the Highlands, the next morning when I showed up to sign the lease, it had been given to someone else.  Later that day I responded to an ad in the paper and looked at a place over by Wash Park which also had a For Rent sign in the front yard, only to find out the next day that the current tenant didn’t want to leave.  My last ditch effort to find a new home landed me on Sloan’s Lake.  Not near Sloan’s Lake, but opening my front door to a view of a small park, the lake and the Rockies in the distance.  I have already fallen victim many times to grabbing my camera and running through the park to catch the sunset as it bounces it’s mystical rays off the clouds and across the partially frozen lake.  I have a feeling that I’m going to have a lot of sunset shots this year…..

Gallery Wrapped Canvas on SALE – 15% Off

Nothing shows off the latest 108-Way World Record like having it printed on a Gallery Wrapped Canvas.  I just got the latest 6 orders in and they all look amazing!  So I’ve decided to discount the price on ALL Canvas Prints by 15% from now until the end of March 31st, 2010.  On top of that if you order 2 Canvas at once I’ll knock 20% off the original price of both.

 
If you are interested please contact me directly for this deal.  The World Record Gallery is still posted at brianbuckland.com  just enter the password “worldrecord09” under the clients section, or “worldrecord07” for that matter.  Here is a break down of the discounted prices below (includes shipping within the USA):
Standard Sizes 15% off
Was: Until March 31:
8×10 Stretched Canvas $140.00 $119.00
11×14 Stretched Canvas $187.00 $159.00
16×20 Stretched Canvas $280.00 $238.00
16×24 Stretched Canvas $319.00 $271.00
18×24 Stretched Canvas $343.00 $292.00
20×24 Stretched Canvas $371.00 $315.00
20×30 Stretched Canvas $426.00 $362.00
24×30 Stretched Canvas $490.00 $417.00
24×36 Stretched Canvas $575.00 $489.00
30×40 Stretched Canvas $755.00 $642.00
40×60 Stretched Canvas $1,255.00 $1,067.00
Panoramic Sizes
5×30 Stretched Canvas $179.00 $152.00
10×20 Stretched Canvas $212.00 $180.00
10×30 Stretched Canvas $269.00 $229.00
12×24 Stretched Canvas $260.00 $221.00
12×36 Stretched Canvas $345.00 $293.00
15×30 Stretched Canvas $349.00 $297.00
20×40 Stretched Canvas $545.00 $463.00

If you’d like to place and order, please contact me directly.  Do not use the online shopping cart as the discount will not be reflected.  Thanks!

The Rocky Mountain Rollergirls

After riding all day up at Keystone Mountain with some friends, I heard that the Roller Derby was in town and I just couldn’t say no.  So back to Denver we went and then off to the Fillmore Auditorium to check out the action.  It was the Sugar Kill Gang vs. Dooms Daisies, just another Saturday night in Denver….