Posted June 16, 2017 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

First post to a new photo micro-blog. Check here for more quick photo posts that don’t necessarily require a full blog write up.

Radiant Review: Canon 50mm f1.8 STM

Posted January 14, 2017 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

I recently reviewed the Canon 50mm f1.8 STM lens. The 50mm f1.8 II was the first lens I got after buying my DSLR with a kit lens. I really like the 50mm focal length, and it’s an inexpensive lens for the image quality it offers. I recently upgraded to the newer Canon 50mm f1.8 STM, and I’m impressed with the improvements Canon made while still keeping the fairly low price. Watch my full review below.

Aurora Tips

Posted May 10, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

Travel Marquette interviewed photographer Shawn Malone for tips about viewing and photographing the Northern Lights. I’ve been following Shawn on Facebook for awhile, and she has made some really excellent images of the aurora.

I’ve only been lucky enough to see the aurora once here in Central Michigan. That evening I took the aurora shot above, which is currently on exhibit at the Helios Gallery in downtown Mt. Pleasant. I’m hoping to watch the space weather forecasts more regularly though. Might as well take advantage of living in the northern latitudes.

Upstate New York 2015

Posted April 22, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

Last summer, we spent a week in Upstate New York. Here were some shots I took while we were there.

The gorge at Letchworth State Park is beautiful.

While visiting Letchworth State Park, we came across this beaver grooming himself in the river.

Here’s a shot of the Upper Falls at Letchworth State Park. You can just catch the bottom of the train tracks crossing the river upstream at the top of this photo.

You can’t visit the Buffalo area without a trip to Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls is too big to really capture in a single photo. I would recommend something like a 50mm lens and move around to really capture the area. Here’s a detail shot of the Horseshoe Falls.

By taking one of the tours like the Maid of the Mist or the Hornblower, you can get a whole different view of the falls. There’s a risk of getting your camera gear wet, so I had a cover for my camera bag and tucked the whole bag under the poncho they gave us once we started getting closer to the Canadian Falls.

We were on the Hornblower boat tour. Tours were running so often, that I was able to grab this photo of the Maid of the Mist (which leaves from the American side).

Even though there is a lot of lush green foliage at the base of the falls, this photo was really asking to be processed in black and white. I used Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. Though I’ve visited Niagara countless times, this shot is one of my favorites. This is another example of not always using a wide angle lens at Niagara Falls. This was shot at 85mm and even cropped a little bit.

Pismo Beach

Posted April 3, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

While visiting family out in California for the holidays, we went to Pismo Beach for a day. It was a hazy day, so it wasn’t the best environment for catching some clear surfing shots, but that didn’t mean there weren’t some good photo opportunities to be had. Check out the album below.

A shot looking south from the pier. The hazy atmosphere resulted in some interesting light.

A surfer on the north side of the pier in the pit. The feeling of getting barreled is like nothing else. Usually Pismo waves break pretty flat, but this day had some great little barrels.

This was taken up on the pier. While seagulls are common along the shore (and even here in Michigan), this guy was particularly sharp. Couldn’t resist grabbing a shot of him.

There were a ton of baby sea gulls running around. They weren’t easy to photograph, since they were moving around so quickly. I liked the reflection of this one in the sand.

Who invited the bi-plane into the line-up? Looks like a nice little set coming in down below.

This was taken from the beach with my 100-400. Nice little cutback off the lip.

A surfer heading in. While walking along the beach I saw this potential shot (when the surfer wasn’t there). I had to wait for awhile before someone passed by to complete the composition.

Photo Walk at Deerfield

Posted April 2, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

I thought it might be fun to create a video of a photo walk. I was out at a local nature park on a winter morning (okay, it was spring, but Michigan doesn’t always behave like the season suggests). In the video, I offer some tips for photographing in the winter, and more specifically in an area like Central Michigan. I also talk a little bit about composition.

Check it out and let me know what you think…

Snocross

Posted March 23, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

A few weeks ago, I went to a Snocross event here in Mt. Pleasant. While I wasn’t able to cover the entire track, I did find a few good spots to capture images from. Most of the time I was able to keep my shutter speed up above 1/1000 of a second to freeze the fast action.

During the first hour of the event, I was over-using the 10 fps high speed shutter in the camera I was using. I was capturing RAW to a 32GB CF card, and JPEG to a 32GB SDXC card. In that first hour I ran through about half of my 32GB memory card. With my other memory cards at home, I had to re-think my approach and make a few changes.

First, I decided that I didn’t need backups of every photo, so I stopped recording JPEG to the SDXC card. Now the camera would instead capture everything in RAW and automatically switch to the SD card when the CF was full.

Second, I realized that even though snocross is fast action, I didn’t need a full 10 fps like other sports where tiny changes in position really count. So I set my low-speed continuous shooting to 6 fps.

The last change I made was in my technique. As the day moved on, I learned to be more judicious about when the best action was happening, and only held down the shutter at those more intense moments. Bursts of 20 photos with a lot of throw-away images turned into bursts of about 4-5 photos at the peak of action. That was about as few photos as I was willing to take, because the first couple photos would usually be waiting for the lens focusing to lock on to the fast-moving subjects. (For focus settings on the 7D Mark II, I used focus case 1 at the beginning of the day, and then switched to focus case 6 later which I felt helped improve the focus speed.)

By the end of the day I ended up with a full CF card and about 50% of my SD card full, so I had plenty of room. Next time I’ll not only have this experience to build off of, but I’ll make sure I don’t forget my extra cards at home for a full day sports event.

Hope you enjoy the gallery. Next up on my Instagram will be some photos I took in December at Pismo Beach.

Jake Geeseman nailing a jump.

The snowcats took good care of the track in-between heats.

Justin Gaudet rockin it

Corin Todd taking off.

Jake Angove putting the hammer down.

Zach Pattyn checks the field

Kevin Wallenstein haulin ass down the hill. This hill was pretty far from where I was standing, so I was at the longer end of my lens for this one. I had a view of the racers for a couple of seconds before they were off down the back straight.

Ian Buchman catching some air around turn 1.

Jeff Jasan starting another lap.

About 10 seconds after the start of a race everyone hits the first jump. I tried to capture the chaos here.

Brady Love riding the lip.

Jake Scott going horizontal.

Korbyn Anderson getting some nice hang time. It was starting to get dark, so I switched from the 100-400mm to my faster 85mm f1.8. I kept the lens wide open and set my ISO to 1600 (and later 2000) to keep the shutter speed around 1/1000 of a second.

Adam Renheim and Zach Pattyn racing neck and neck.

Mike George hitting the first jump in a triple along the back stretch. At 85mm, I had a fast enough lens, but not quite the reach of the 100-400. I still really liked how the powder was lit here.

Mike George celebrating

Snocross silhouette

New Orleans 2016

Posted March 1, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

In January, I went to the American Meteorological Society’s Annual Meeting in New Orleans. The conference is just under a week long, so I had plenty of time to see the sights and get out in the evenings for some photography. It was my second time in New Orleans, so I had an idea of places I wanted to visit and things I wanted to do.

New Orleans is unlike any other city in the United States. It has an exceedingly rich culture, a beautiful variety of architecture, and fantastic night life. You can spend days exploring the French Quarter alone.

Here are the photos I took while on the trip.

There are a million things to photograph in New Orleans, if you have the Desire.

New Orleans has style, inside and out. There is no shortage of bars on Bourbon Street. I liked the architecture of this bar’s exterior in particular.

The old-school architecture in the French Quarter never gets old. The 85mm lens is a perfect focal length for this type of street photography. I hung out across the street for about 10 minutes photographing people walking by this door. I was able to get the shot without my presence altering the behavior of people in the image.

Came across this scene behind the St. Louis Cathedral. Intentional or not, it was pretty cool.

Practicing my “walking by” photos.

I took this photo through a grated metal door, yet you can’t even tell (thank you depth-of-field). Loved the look of this hallway.

I took this shot while snacking on some beignets at Cafe du Monde. Tip: be diligent while wiping the beignet powdered sugar off your hands before picking up your camera.

The countless art galleries in New Orleans are a big draw. Exploring them is a great way to spend a day.

Art isn’t for everyone. Sometimes you’re just trying to get home.

Walking in the French Quarterâ€¦

Music, of course, is a big draw of New Orleans. You couldn’t walk a block in the French Quarter at night without coming across a live band.

Playing in a courtyard of a cafe on Bourbon Street.

These guys were great performers. So much fun to listen to.

Not a train. Not a trolly. This is a streetcar.

A pink Cadillac I came across while walking the French Quarter in New Orleans.

Something about the man in the window of this book store caught my eye.

Kevin Durant Photographs Super Bowl 50

Posted February 8, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

Most people associate Kevin Durant with the NBA. However, one of his hobbies is photography, and by a stroke of luck he got an offer to cover Super Bowl 50 from the sidelines. It was interesting to see the parallels between his experience photographing the Super Bowl and my own experience photographing a Central Michigan University football game last October.

Read about his experience.