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Cory Photography with Tom and Pat Cory |
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Venice, 2007 |
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Newsletter, November 2007 Continued |
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Cory Photography Newsletter 28 November 5, 2007
In this edition you will find: Cades Cove, Window to a Secret World by Bill Lea Lens Test: The Sigma 18-200 Optical Stabilized Lens The Creative Process: Beyond the Postcard Give Yourself a Photographer's Holiday Our 2008 Schedule Hunt’s Specials for our Readers
Hello!
It's finally cooled off here—now if we could just get a little rain. We figured that we'd miss the fall color while we were on our recent trip to Italy, but we came home to a lot of green trees. Things have changed a lot this past week and it seems to be becoming more colorful by the hour. What a wonderful time of year!
This is also the time of year to start dropping hints about what would make nice Christmas gifts. We can always find room for more photography 'essentials' in our camera bags or nowadays on our computer. We have had several inquiries from folks wanting to give gift certificates for either a workshop or an individual lesson to someone for a Christmas present. If that sounds of interest to you, please let us know.
We have most of our workshops/photo tours for 2008 scheduled now and folks are beginning to sign up. Please let us know if you have any questions about any of them. We have a number of short local workshops scheduled for the spring. We hope that you will be able to join us.
We'll be presenting programs for the Huntsville Photographic Society on November 12, and SANP in Knoxville on Tuesday, November 27.
Best wishes for a wonderful holiday season! Tom and Pat
Cades Cove, Window to a Secret World by Bill Lea
Many of you know Bill Lea, a wonderful person and a terrific photographer. Bill has spent a lot of time photographing in Cades Cove and his new book shows how he has captured the beauty of a place that he loves. The book is available in book stores, the Great Smoky Mountains Visitor Centers, and most Great Smoky Mountains Association outlets. Click here to see more about the book or to order it. If you would like more information you can contact Bill directly at bears@dnet.net.
Lens Test: The Sigma 18-200 Optical Stabilized Lens
Pat and I just led a 14 day photography field trip to Italy. I made about 800 images with Sigma's new 18-200mm (28-300mm –35mm equivalent) OS lens. Lenses with optical stabilization are becoming an essential part of travel photography, as they allow you to photograph in areas where a tripod is either cumbersome or not allowed.
I was very pleased with the optical quality of this lens. My images are sharp and crisp, especially when I could photograph at between f/8 and f/ll. The optical stabilization works well on this lens; I made several hand-held images inside churches at shutter speeds as low as 1/10 of a second with more than acceptable sharpness.
The lens feels reasonably well made and worked flawlessly. It does have some barrel distortion—not unusual for a zoom in this range—and I personally would like the focusing ring to be further away from the zoom ring than it is. Except for these two minor concerns I can certainly recommend this lens to anyone looking for an all-purpose travel lens.
The Creative Process: Beyond the Postcard
When I'm traveling in a foreign country I like to give myself assignments that push me to do more than record the usual sights. On our field trip to Italy I certainly photographed the Duomo in Florence, the vineyards in Tuscany, the towers of Sam Gimignano, and the gondolas of Venice. In each place I also tried to pick a subject that was either a bit different in itself, or worked with a familiar subject in a different way. For example in Florence I photographed the wonderfully beat-up bicycles that the Florentines like to use in lieu of paying $8.25 gallon for gas. I ended up with about 30 images of bicycles, 3 or 4 of which I really liked. In Venice I photographed many of the small shrines that one finds in the back alleys. I also continued my project of photographing gondolas using long exposures, trying to create an artistic blur. (In fact I overdid it; fortunately one of our participants reminded me to try a few images that weren't blurred.)
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