River shots

I wasn't feeling all that inspired today when it came to photography possibilities, so after work I decided to head up Kelly Stand Road, hoping that being in a different locale would spark some ideas. Now that it's June the road's open all the way up the mountain, enabling me to find a nice, quiet spot to pull over that wasn't already occupied by some of the many campers who hang out along the Roaring Branch this time of year.

After making my way down to the water's edge (not quite carefully enough, I'm afraid—I have a feeling I'll be needing some Motrin before too long here), I used some smaller stones to get out onto a large, mostly flat rock, where I took a seat and snapped some shots of the water:





Remembering some of my previous experiments with changing the aperture, I dialed it down as far as the camera would let me and tried a few photos. Because it was late afternoon and overcast, the camera automatically compensated for the small amount of light I was letting in by keeping the shutter open much longer. So my first photos, taken when I was simply holding the camera, were really blurry all the way around—I couldn't keep it steady enough to allow anything to stay in focus. Undeterred, I switched over to using the monitor instead of the viewfinder, propped the camera on my knee, and tried again:



For the rest of my time there I either used my knee as a brace or put the camera right on the rock itself, taking full advantage of my ability to move and angle the monitor so I could still see what I was aiming at:







Of course, it was only when I was heading back to my car that I remembered I had a perfectly good monopod/tripod hybrid sitting in the backseat... Ah well. Maybe next time.