Great scenes fly by when you can’t stop to photograph them. Parking in the fast lane on an Interstate is ill-advised, even for a potentially masterful shot. Other times the situation is marginal. This May a nice scene presented itself when we were returning to the Lake Tahoe region in the California mountains from the pleasant town of Minden, Nevada. I pulled barely off the road and grabbed two frames out of the car window, and somehow managed to splice them into a respectable panorama.

Point Lobos is one of the world’s great scenic places. While the rocky shore and surf are reliable, sunshine there is not. We were lucky recently and had brilliant sun along with spring wild flowers. With all those things helping, it’s not too difficult to take good pictures. We drove to the Bird Rock area, at the end of the short park road. To make photography a more interesting problem, add some kids running near the edge of the ocean bluff.

Let’s admit that tripods are a pain to carry, set up, and use. The Quick Shot Artist principle is to avoid them whenever possible. Despite the pain, however, there are times when you just have to have one. They are like lawyers in that regard. I endured the trauma recently —picking a tripod, that is— and have some tips to pass along. I ended up with a three-part assembly from Manfrotto: an aluminum tripod, a ball leveler, and a pan-and-tilt head.

Early this month we traveled east to the California mountains for a few days. It was Spring in most of California, including the foothills where stayed. It was nice weather the first day, but it rained for the next two. Rain down slope means snow in the higher elevations. The best conditions for beautiful snow cover are temperatures not far below freezing with no wind. That lets the snow accumulate on the trees. With that prospect overnight and clear skies the next morning we drove to Calaveras Big Trees State Park.

A viaduct is a long bridge consisting of a series of short spans supported on piers or towers. In the U.S. viaducts became popular in the era of railroad building to take the rails across wide valleys. Not long ago I had a two-viaduct day in northern Pennsylvania. The best photos are aerial shots with blue sky, fall foliage, and an historic locomotive traversing the span. I didn’t manage that, but viaducts are nonetheless interesting subjects worth capturing.

I found three aspects of viaducts I could treat on a cloudy winter’s day: the panorama of the setting, the craftsmanship of construction, and life under the bridge.

Starrucca Viaduct. Larger version here.

The city of Ithaca, New York, boasts having over a hundred waterfalls and gorges within ten miles. The web led me to one of the more noted, Ithaca Falls. My goal for photographing such sights is to answer the question: “What was it like?” To start with, it was cold. Beyond that, the falls were beautiful, the stream from the falls was in a gorge, and there were a few tourists enjoying the scenery.

It’s too early for most of the mustard flowers, but we traveled to Napa this week to see how things were progressing. I wanted to make the best of a partly cloudy sky, so I took two frames for a spliced panorama. If the sky and the ground are in a single frame, the sky is usually overexposed and and the ground underexposed. With two images, the camera exposure adjusts separately for the sky and ground. The image breaks two rules of composition.

Suppose that you were on safari when a rare white rhino appeared. How would you feel if you didn’t have a camera with you? I had that happen, but I was prepared. Well, I wasn’t on safari, I was walking the local park, and it wasn’t actually a rhinoceros, it was a flock of pelicans. But those are details. The important point is to have a camera for unexpected photo opportunities.

I did get a few photos at the aquarium, and they served to remind me of some of the problems at such a venue. Many people were taking pictures with the flash on. That’s going to get pictures of the white reflection off the glass, not the fish. It’s better to seek the well-lit exhibits. Getting up against the glass avoids reflections and steadies the camera, but don’t prevent the lens from adjusting to focus. Better to rest a forearm on the glass. That keeps off fingerprint smears as well. Some exhibits are dark with the sea creatures highlighted from above. These have to be underexposed by at least two stops below automatic to keep the background dark.

The automatic exposure capability of modern cameras is a thing to be cherished. It usually produces excellent photos with nothing more than point-and-shoot. There are occasions, however, when it is best to override the automation to force a lower exposure. The built-in exposure automation assumes that the scene is reflecting 18% of the light falling upon it, and that nothing in the scene varies too much from the 18% average. There is trouble when one of those assumptions is wrong.