WOODS & WATERS

Seeing things from a

DIFFERENT ANGLE

HOW THE PANDEMIC TURNED ME INTO AN OUTDOORS PHOTOGRAPHER

BY BOB DUCHESNE

MY LIFE FEELS LIKE a chronic Zoom meeting, and that’s not the only change brought on by an unfortunate pandemic. I’m becoming a photographer. No, I mean a real one, not just someone with a point-and-shoot fetish, skilled only at taking photos of puppies and children’s birthdays. A year of semi-isolation seems to have transformed many lives. Since we couldn’t socially-gather indoors, many of us socially-distanced outdoors. There has been a surge in hunting, fishing, camping, canoeing and wildlife-watching. My transformation into a photographer followed the same pattern. It happened completely by accident, when a used Canon EOS 80d came into my possession. It was just the camera body, no lens. I didn’t even own a lens. The following week I bought my first, a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM Lens. Those numbers didn’t mean anything to me. It just seemed like a relatively inexpensive way to try out my new toy. A YEAR OF Up until this point, I had been the proud owner of a Fujifilm Finepix S1 SEMI-ISOLATION SEEMS — a point-and-shoot superzoom that could manage 50x magnification. Such cameras are also called bridge cameras, because they bridge the gap TO HAVE TRANSFORMED between basic traditional cameras and the advanced DSLR cameras, one of which I now possessed. MANY LIVES. SINCE WE DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex. It bounces the target

COULDN’T SOCIALLY- image off a mirror into the viewfinder, giving the photographer a precise look at the subject and its focus. The mirror snaps out of the

GATHER INDOORS, way when the shutter is pressed. The advantage of DSLR cameras is MANY OF US SOCIALLY- that you can interchange a variety of lenses on one body. I still use the Finepix. It can do many of the things a DSLR can DISTANCED OUTDOORS. do. But not everything. My reaction to the new camera was like that

of a child who has been coloring with a box of eight crayons, only to be gifted with a box of 64. I was infatuated. Formerly, I had just set my camera on automatic and let it make all the decisions.

Now, for the first time, I actually cared about such things as aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings.

I began to look at nature differently. Where once I had merely admired the view, now I considered the color, the lighting, the angle of the sun. I came to cherish the golden hour, when sunrise makes everything glow. I came to despise backlighting, when bright overcast behind a bird in a tree caused the camera to misjudge the exposure.

I learned that I could widen the aperture enough to blur a background, letting the foreground pop into glaring focus. I learned that a fast shutter speed will stop the wings of a hummingbird. I learned that I could push the limits of dim light by manipulating ISO settings.

I considered composition. Where once I simply framed the subject in the middle, I began to capture the inherent drama in a wildlife photo by moving the subject off-center. I learned the Rule of Thirds — a popular composition technique that divides the view into thirds vertically and horizontally, and then places a key element, such as a moose’s eyeball, where lines intersect.

I got down on my belly. Birds, squirrels and other critters look far more interesting when the photo is taken at their eye level. Flowers and rocks and garden gnomes are more interesting at ground level.

I shot moonrises, sunsets, and starry night time-lapses. Once upon a time, I took Maine’s dark sky for granted. But for an entire winter I waited for that perfect night when the moon is new, the stars are bright, and the sky is cloudless. It never came. It was a short but overcast winter. This month’s new moon occurs on August 8. I expect rain … again.

I studied video tutorials. There’s an endless supply on YouTube. I took Photoshop lessons. I upgraded my editing software. I bought another lens. And another. I likely would have saved money if I had instead become addicted to fly-fishing.

Camera technology continues to advance rapidly. A new generation of mirrorless cameras has arrived on the market. Smartphone cameras are now so sophisticated, they can produce cinematic video. They have exponentially more computing power than the Apollo 11 moon landing. Gone are Kodak and Polaroid. Now, brands like Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic and Olympus are in a technology war to determine who can make you the happiest. If ever there was a time to become addicted to photography, this is it.

I think I’ll buy another lens.

BOB DUCHESNE is a local radio personality, Maine guide, and columnist. He lives on Pushaw Lake with his wife, Sandi.