corwinprescott

Skyhook, Miss Macaroni, and Rachel Dashae at The Wissahickon

Added 2015-08-05 18:52:44 +0000 UTC

Its a summer tradition for me to shoot in the forest by my house. The hot weather and vacation fills my favorite places to the brim with tourists from all over the country. Bad drivers, children, and nightmarish campsite crowding means I retreat from the road and national parks to my home until fall or winter. I enjoy nature for the isolation it brings, and this time of year that means I spend a lot of time in the Wissahickon.

I've been trying to shoot down here at least once a week since I got back. Skyhook and I made the trip to shoot a set, but after only 10 minutes around sunset huge dark clouds rolled in. We knew this was going to be a quicky and made the most of what little time we had before the sky let loose. I was forced to use my 85mm and only my 85mm as our evening light was all but blotted out by the quickly approaching thunderstorm. Even then we still managed to get a few good photos before we quickly hiked back to the car.

Miss Macaroni and I had a little bit more time in the woods. We hiked around shooting in and around the water. I love being able to shoot in the shade of the trees and from above the models in the woods. Standing precariously on rocks and tree branches is risky, but the vantage point just makes for beautiful light, and a cool perspective. All of my photos from this day were shot with my canon 17-40mm F4L

One thing I have wanted to explore and try more is underwater shooting. A really good waterproof housing for a D-SLR is a couple thousand dollars though, so I haven't been able to really give this a shot. A few years ago I picked up a DICAPAC housing for my 5d, but found it really difficult to use. Focusing under water is difficult, composing is difficult, zooming is difficult, and what little controls you can get your fingers on in the DICAPAC housing are very very hard to operate. Needless to say I got frustrated after two relatively unsuccessful shoots, and it has been sitting in my closet ever since.

Yesterday Rachel and I decided it would be worth giving the damn thing another shot. I packed up my bag, towels, snorkel gear, multiple pairs of goggles, and we hiked out to one of the few swimming holes near by deep enough to shoot in. The water was relatively clear for a creak, so things looked like they might go alright. I learned after previous attempts that the easiest way to focus is to do it above water as the magnification of the water makes it very difficult to try and figure out below the surface, and the low visibility makes it even worse. My initial plan was to use the live view mode to shoot, but it was actually harder to see the screen on the camera than it was to smash my goggles up against the view finder, and try to compose that way. After about 5 attempts shooting under water we had kicked up so much sediment that getting anymore photos was going to be pretty much impossible, so we surfaced took a little break, and then continued shooting above the surface. I again used only the 17-40mm F4L for all of these photos even though I hiked in with two camera bodies and 5 lenses...whooops

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/usnwr2oqvkv3sll/AADK1mrHUZ0eCnmXLP0ASc7ia?dl=0