Oh Those Goofy Photographers

It's no secret, as much as I despise crowds I also derive great enjoyment from observing the Human Condition.  And whenever you get a group of people together it's almost a certainty that there will be some goofy things going on.  The kind of goofy things that make you go "Hmmmmmmm..."  Sadly, photographers are no exception.

Don't get me wrong, the group of Rocky Mountain Nature Photographers I spent Saturday with is a great group of folks.  I enjoyed myself more than I have on a photo trip in a long time and I didn't observe anything strange though I'm sure there are as many eccentrics  in that group as the general population with me leading the way.  For the time I was around them, all parties were well behaved and rational.

I can't say the same about every photographer I encountered this weekend though, especially some of the ones I saw at Delicate Arch.  There were some really "interesting" folks both on the trail and at the Arch and I spent time alternating between chuckling and just shaking my head. 

As I stated in a previous blog I knew the opportunity to make world class images of Delicate Arch wasn't going to happen on Sunday afternoon.  It was overcast and really windy so the light would be flat and there would be little or no chance to steady a camera in the gale force winds.  With this in mind I left the backpack and big tripod in the car and started up the trail with my G10 in it's belt pouch and carrying my little Induro tripod.  The light was going to be flat and ugly (witness the image above) so there was no logical reason to drag 25 pounds of gear up 1 1/2 miles of slickrock.  Besides, the G10 is a great little camera and capable of producing some fantastic images so I was covered in the event of a miracle. 

Going up the trail I saw all the expected things.  Tourists with movie cameras running ahead of their group then stopping to film them coming up the trail.  There were the usual array of people both young and old photographing the scenery with their smart phones.  And one older gentleman who had an array of gear like I've never seen.  He had a large photo backpack on his back with a camelback water bladder strapped to one side of it.  On the other side he had a HUGE tripod and massive ballhead which together probably weighed close to 12 or 15 pounds.  In front he had a large padded lens case capable of holding a camera with a large telephoto lens and since I saw a trunk case for a 300mm lens in the back of his truck I have to assume he was toting that lens in the big case.  Though I don't know what he had in his backpack, with the water, the big lens, mongo tripod, and everything else I bet he had 35 or 40 pounds of gear strapped on his torso.  To carry that much gear up a moderately difficult trail on a day when it's going to be impossible to make a pro quality image is something that baffles me.  God bless you, brother.  I'm glad it was you toting the stuff and not me. 

The strangest thing about him, though, is that he carried that bigass tripod all the way up the hill and never opened it up.  I was there for an hour or more and I never once saw him shoot something that wasn't handheld, a lot of it with a big heavy lens, probably an 80-200 f2.8.  He may have been shooting wide open to increase his shutter speeds but in the low light conditions with the wind blowing at gale force, there is no possible way his images could have been sharp.  Things that make you go "Hmmmmmmmm..."

During my time at Delicate Arch I saw the usual suspects hiking down to have their picture taken standing under the arch and there was even one guy laying on his back with his camera pointing up at the arch.  The first and only other time I was at Delicate Arch, any time someone walked near the arch they were met with a chorus of "Get out of there...you're spoiling my shot" from the photographers up on the rim.  This time, though, we all just looked at each other and grinned.  What the heck...the folks down there under the Arch paid their $10 bucks just like I did and most of them are tourists from another country.  They most likely will never see this site again so let em get their pictures to show the friends when they get back wherever home is.

But by far the oddest duck of the day was a young man with a shiny new Lowe Pro backpack chock full of camera gear.  There I was, holding onto my tripod mounted G10 to avoid having it blown off the hill (have I mentioned the wind was blowing pretty hard?) when suddenly I hear someone fire off 9 frames with the drive on their camera on full auto Shake and Bake mode.  9 frames in about 2 seconds.  Having done that before I assumed that he had merely forgotten to take his camera off motor drive after shooting some wildlife but NO!  He moved a few steps to the right and did the same thing.  Again, handheld camera and big lens. At this point I draw the conclusion that he's bracketing exposures which is something that I don't usually do but I know a lot of photographers that bracket everything.  But wait...it gets better!  A few minutes later the same young man hops up on a ledge fully exposed to the wind (I hate being redundant but I swear, it was probably blowing 40 mph gusting to 50 or 60mph) and triggers his motor drive again.  This time, though, he turns at the waist, panning about 140 degrees from left to right.  Shooting frames for a panorama? 

Keep in mind, some of the photographers I hang out with are gearheads of the highest order.  My friend Rich paid big bucks for a special head called Nodal Ninja that allows you to precisely calibrate multiple exposures for stitching together as a panorama.  One of the photographers I was with on Saturday had a special device built to allow her to shoot time lapse panoramic images.  Now here this goof is trying to be his own panoramic head when you can see him swaying in the wind.  There is absolutely no way he could have possibly gotten sharp images that way.  Combine the wind with the movement of the camera while he was twisting his body and it's a physical impossibility.  I was tempted to ask him what he was doing but I couldn't figure out a way to ask that wouldn't sound like I was patronizing him or being condescending.  Sure made me go "Hmmmm..." though. 

What's your goofiest photography trick?  You show me yours and I'll show you mine!  Leave a comment and lets have some fun.