You are probably wondering where I have been??
Believe it or not, I have barely touched my camera since this damn virus hit the world. At first, I was thinking I would be able to travel anywhere I wanted without crowds of tourists, and was kind of excited about it. BUT, that didn’t pan out, obviously…most every country closed their borders, so travel has been pretty much not an option. Even here in Indonesia, I wasn’t able to leave Jakarta. Bali was (and still is) closed, Raja Ampat closed right after we left in March, and inter-island travel is pretty much restricted to business only.
So…I went to the States to visit family. I did bring my camera, but didn’t take many photos.
I did have ONE photo in mind for my visit to the States. For the past few years, I have wanted to photograph the Angel Oak Tree in Charleston, South Carolina. I had done my research beforehand, and knew exactly where to position myself for a panoramic photo of the massive 500-year-old tree. The one positive side of Covid, is that there was only a small group of people visiting the tree at the same time I was there. It didn’t take too much waiting to get a clean shot of no people.
After about a half hour, there was a lull in people around the tree…so, I bounced off the bench and fired off 51 photos in three rows. Just as I finished taking the series of photos, a bunch of people arrived, and the peaceful scene was again full of people. I did make a mistake taking the photos…I shot at f/4, and that was a mistake. When looking at my photos on my computer, some of the background branches are out of focus. Oh well…dang!! But the final photo came out pretty nice, anyway. I did have to do some Photoshop work to remove the yellow chain around the tree, and some annoying signs that were distracting.
Here is the final version…87 million pixels.