My Walk To The Library

I took a stroll over to the library today. For a lark I took my D40 with the Sigma 30 MM prime on it. It has been a while since I shot with the D40 and it was time for a refresher (since it is my backup body).

With a new-again camera in my hands, I tried to look at the very familiar route with new eyes. I took photos I would otherwise have ignored and had fun doing it. And, for a lark, I thought I would try presenting the images differently here.

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Part of the fun of the Sigma 30 is that it has a max aperture of f/1.4 so I can do some crazy short depth of field things. In fact, I shot both of the above images at f/1.4 and realized that the DOF was too short and the background went too far out of focus. The two above were taken at f/3.2 (trailer) and f/2.8 (cart and fence). The self pic below is f/4 and the Harley is at f/1.6. In all cases the shutter speeds were very high, around 1/2000th, at ISO 200.

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That is sort of the opposite of what I have been doing lately. For the past few weeks I have been playing around with tiny apertures (f/29 and up), super low ISO (100) and loooong shutter speeds (like 1 second or more). Often I have been piling on a neutral density (ND4) and circular polarizing filter to further restrict the light. It is all good, informative tomfoolery that teaches me my trade.

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I frequent the library because I can draw from 51 libraries in South-Central Wisconsin. The odds of finding what I am looking for are pretty high. Today's trip was because a requested item - "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott Heron - was in. While I was there I picked up a couple of DVDs to watch and looked at some books. Who in their right mind would NOT use the library?

These and a few other photos from my walk are available as a SLIDE SHOW in large format. Enjoy!