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Tag Archives: Cape Cod
Cold Snap
I came across this bouy in the ice while wondering around the frozen marsh at Paines Creek. It actually was a beautiful day, just a little chilly, it was about 18 degrees at the time I shot this. If you are inclined to shoot in conditions like this I suggest you invest as much into your wardrobe as you do in you camera equipment. If you are uncomfortable, cold and wet I guarantee you will not get all the great shots out there. Frost bite and worse happen very fast when skin is exposed to water in these temperatures. I suggest tall rubber mud boots that our 100% water proof and long under ware and cold weather outer wear. I have been using Burton gear for almost 30 years and have stayed toasty warm even in the most extreme conditions.
Ocean Ice
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
Had a great time dangling thousands of dollars of photography equipment over the icy waters of Paines Creek today. Just to up the ante, it was 18 degrees out, so I didn’t have a great grip. luckily, when financial loss is on the table I go into ninja, mind over matter mode… Zero camera gear loss and I still have all my digits.
Teri M.
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
One of the great things about living in New England during the late fall and winter is that there is never bad light. When you are down south you really cant shoot from 10 am to 2 pm because of the harsh overhead light. Up here the shadows are always long and the light soft. None of that really applies to this photo, I made it late in the afternoon in Provincetown.
Cape Lighthouse
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
This is a nice little lighthouse in Eastham Ma. Loved the sky on the day I shot this on. The jet contrails made a perfect X with this nautical beacon. I must admit I have fallen behind on my posting as I have been working on a huge print job. The good news is I am almost done!
Lighting tests
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
Another self-portrait. I actually have a lot more of these then I thought. It is not because I am narcissistic, I swear!(even though I lived in LA for way too long) Like most other portrait photographers, I tend to spend a significant amount of time on lighting before my sessions. I not only want to know exactly what settings will work for my gear but, I want to know what the range is that I can get away with under the current conditions. I want to know when over/under exposure finally breaks down the image. When doing all this tweaking, I need to take test shots. My wife/photography partner usually comes in towards the end when I am really fine tuning the set up. Before that, I am my test subject. Here is one of my lighting test shots.
Senior Photo’s
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
This is from one of our senior portrait sessions this season. There are a lot of moving parts doing an out-door portrait session. This was a last-minute reservation, by that, I mean we had less than two weeks to take this from start to finish. Then the day of the shoot rolled around and Mother Nature decided to give her in put. It rained. So we rescheduled, now we had six days from shutter fire to delivery. Well lucky, Mother Nature was kind to us on our second date. It was an amazing day, blue skies with wispy clouds! Perfect. It also helps when your model is a natural in front of the lens also. I have a feeling I will be posting many more photos from this day.
Camo
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
I love going out and capturing some shallow depth of field detail shots of the natural world. Processing them in black and white really lets me concentrate on texture of I am looking at. I’ll let you in on a secret, this image was made pretty close to home.
Settings:
ISO 50 : 50 mm : ƒ/1.2 : 1/1000sec
Moss
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
I had a great day yesterday shooting a new client, so I didn’t get a chance to go out and shoot my typical photos and have to rely on my archives for todays post. Here is an image I made of some moss. I love the intricacy of nature and how it is represented in this gorgeous green growth, not to mention the color contrast of the boken leaves in the background and the beautiful blue sky. I cant stress how much I love the colors of fall.
Settings:
ISO 50 : 50 mm : ƒ/1.2 : 1/5000 sec
toughest shot you can take
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
Today I was prepping for a senior portrait session I have booked for tomorrow. My nerves were kind of getting to me about this one, not because I am doing a portrait session but because there is no wiggle room here. This is a very last minute shoot, the photos are due 6 days from the shoot! Well there is only one way for me to handle challenges, straight on and at full tilt! If you want to hit it out of the park you better swing with everything you got. To calm my nerves I decided to put myself in front of the lens. That way I could work a couple of locations, poses and post processes. This was one of my picks.
Settings:
ISO 100 : 16mm : ƒ/2.8 : 1/1000 sec : tripod : flash
Cemetery Season
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
The season is upon us to spend a bit more time in the graveyards. I personally love them, it is something that missing from the west coast landscape. While there are cemeteries out west, they are much more uniform and organized then their counterparts on the eastern seaboard. Nothing beats the New England cemeteries, It is easy to stumble upon markers with dates going back to the 1600′s. The layout of these graveyards seem sporadic and random. I also love the weathered art work adorning these beautiful stones. They are usually decorated with sculls, angles or just graphical designs. Some people may find it morbid to spend time in these locations but I find it extremely peaceful and a great way connect with our past. Anytime is a great time to visit but they are magical in the autumn. I hope to have many more moody grave site photos in the next few months.
Settings:
ISO 50 : 50 mm : ƒ/1.2 : 1/3200 sec : No Tripod
Cliché Friday – Shallow DOF Fall Leaves
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
There are all kinds of photographs depicting autumn. I can guarantee, now that I live in New England, that I will posting many here in the next few months. Well I thought it would be a great idea to kick off the season with a cliché friday post. When out shooting I noticed this spiraling leaf pattern that pretty much replicated the golden ratio. I set my aperture to ƒ1.2 to get a super shallow and to accent the compositional foundation.
Settings:
ISO 50 : 50mm : ƒ/1.2 : 1/2500 sec : No Tripod
out for sunset
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
After a few busy weeks I finally broke out for a sunset shoot. I had a great time but, I feel like I got really lucky with this photo. I decided to go at the last minute, so I didn’t scout the location or check the tides, this all lead to a frantic search for, well, anything. Here’s where I got lucky, I stumbled across these great rocks and the tide was at the perfect hight so as the small waves from boat traffic made these boulders break the waters surface. It was a good night.
Truro Vineyard
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
After moving from California, the last thing I would have expected to find on Cape Cod was a Winery but, here it is! I am by no means a wine connoisseur but, I have spent plenty of time with some in many renown wine regions and honestly this one can hold its own. Funny thing about the Cape, come early fall it seems every day of every weekend there seems to have some type of charity walk, race, bike challenge or just plain old get together. On this typical New England day we found ourselves at vineyards celebrating the Truro Treasures, wine stomp and jazz. We had a splendid time eating great food from local vendors and enjoying the regions finest fermented fruits.
You may have noticed yesterday that there was no post. I spent the day opening a virtual store so that you can now purchase prints directly from In Between Stops! Please take the time to have a look. Click here!
Prioritizing
©Rob Nitsch – click to enlarge!
Sometimes photography and life do not get along. After many weeks of unpacking and settling into a new life on the right coast, I found I was spending less and less time shooting. Which is contradictory to the reason we relocated. Although I was doing a lot of work for my photography and art production, like putting together what I consider a dream home office and designing print materials, I wasn’t actually getting behind the lens. So on Friday I got to spend the morning with August. I decided to combine our play time outside with a photo shoot. It was really important for me though, that play time was the priority not the photos, So I went into a semi-photojournalistic mode. I made sure I wasn’t out there posing August, I was just documenting our morning. Many times I put down the camera and jumped into the fun. The session was a success for both of us, August had a great morning on a beautiful autumn morning and Dad broke his photographic dry spell.
Indian Summer
©Rob Nitsch
I thought we were full steam ahead into fall but this week it looks like mother nature decided to lock up the breaks, and throw us into a wild J-Turn! She even set the climate control to humid! This is a shot of a road side stand that is a couple miles from my house. During the summer it is full of vegetables but, come early autumn it is full of amazing flower arrangements. The stand is unmanned and the prices are listed on a small hand written sign. You may take a vase to transport your fresh cuts home. This is the honor system though and you are asked to return the vase after. It is kinda nice seeing people put that much faith in others. I am happy to say this type of commerce is not uncommon on Cape Cod.
Settings:
ISO 400 : 16mm : ƒ/2.8 : 1/200 sec : No Tripod
Smiles
©Rob Nitsch
Sometimes a smile will concur a miss focus. Well this is really just a throw away image for me, I am just using it as an example of home many throw away images you will have when photographing a toddler. They will run from you, run away from you and just plain try to elude you but, I can tell you shooting children can be the most fun YOU can have as a photographer. Make sure you shoot a lot of photos because your ratio of keeper to rejected photos is going to be a little depressing. The keepers though, are going to be some of your most favorite photos in your portfolio! Also limber up before the session because you will definitely be diving, crawling climbing and rolling on the ground to get your shots.
©Rob Nitsch
Warning: All children charge! In the first shot August was coming at me so fast that I couldn’t get the focus and hold my flash, well I ended up on my ass!
Cliché Friday – The Car shot
©Rob Nitsch
How much more cliché can you get then the car shot? Hey let’s get even more specific, shall we? How much more cliché can you get then the 3/4 SUV shot in a desolate landscape? If you don’t have this one in your image library you may just be asking yourself “am I adventurous enough?” Labor day weekend we decided to take the Land Rover out on to the Flats. For those not familiar with the Cape, when the tide goes out on the bay side of the lower Cape, it goes out more than a mile in some spots. Some towns allow you to drive out there if you have the proper over sand permits. This gave us a little taste of what the Land Rovers sand driving capabilities and let me tell you, they did not disappoint. Once we got out as far as the tide would allow, I had to hop out and grab this iconic picture.
Settings:
ISO 100 : 23mm : ƒ/2.8 : 1/1600 sec : polarizing filter : No Tripod
Fields of Silver
©Rob Nitsch
Yesterday I was able to break away with August and do an impromptu photo session at the towns public garden. Worked out pretty well, Mom got some time to get some stuff done, Dad got some photography time and August got some fun time! The clouds were a little thick for my liking, but I was able to grab a bit of detail by shooting with a polarizer filter. Also this was the first black and white that I have developed in Lightroom. I have to say, Lightroom definitely has a leg up with its B & W conversion over Aperture. the best description of it is that it is much more robust then the Aperture toolset.
Settings:
ISO 500 : 16mm : ƒ/8.0 : 1/640 sec : No Tripod
August’s Apple
©Rob Nitsch
Things may look a little different around here now. Over the weekend I switched out the theme for inebetweenstops, I transitioned to one that was a little more versatile yet still simple. Of course, I thought this would be a little change but that is never the case. Now lets Also throw in that I am transitioning from Aperture to Lightroom. I feel like I am trying to sprint in quick sand. Today’s Lightroom pet peeve; adobe, Where the hell is your soft proofing? Hard to call Lightroom a professional application with out it. Enough with all that business, this is about photography and my tag line is Funtography! So lets bring on the fun!
This is one of our apple trees. It is a small tree and this is the only piece of fruit hanging on it! I still find it pretty cool. Since we arrived on the Cape, August noticed this apple. Every time he goes near this tree, he points and laughs at this apple. We have to pick him up to get a closer look. If we had the arm strength he would stare at this apple from that vantage point all day. We are now into september and fall is right around the corner, I have a feeling we will be off to the orchards very soon so August can pick apples to his hearts desire.
Settings:
ISO 100 : 35mm : ƒ/2.8 : 1/800 sec : No Tripod