The Mister and I (via community property, thank goodness) own a business. Every now and then I have to drive the half hour or so into Houston to make my presence known by cracking the whip and knocking heads together so that the workers know who’s really in charge of the operation.
Well, not really. But I do stop in and visit once in a blue moon. Which happened last Friday. The Mister wanted me to sit in on a meeting about the company’s websites (wholesale and retail locations). I did, and the highlight was that I didn’t look at my iPhone 3GS for 80 torturous minutes. No checking e-mail, texting, or updating my Facebook status. How did I live without a smartphone?!?
The best part of driving into Houston? After we went out for lunch, we were near one of the city’s interesting attractions, the Water Wall in the Galleria area. I had brought my Olympus Stylus Tough point and shoot and my Nikon D700 with me in case a photo of the day opportunity arose. I heard that photo op knocking loud and clear!
The day was chilly, and all that water pounding away was dizzying. I had put my Nikon 105mm lens on the D700, forgetting to add the star utility player 50mm lens or the 35-70mm to my bag. The 105 was too long to get a good wide-angle view of the water wall; fortunately, I had my Olympus point and shoot with me.
The 105 came in handy for experimenting with using a fast vs. slow shutter speed to see what effect it would have on how some of the 11,000 gallons of flowing water (per minute) looked. Above, I closed my aperture (f/18), which slowed the shutter speed to 1/25th of a second.
Here I opened up the aperture to f/5.6, which sped up the shutter to 1/250th. I’m not sure which effect I like better, but both look pretty cool.
Here are more photos illustrating the effect of slow vs. fast shutter speed on how the water looks.
Given my druthers, I prefer the photos taken with the faster shutter speed.
But either way, I’m sure glad I had my camera with me for when that photo op knocked. It made traveling to the big city for a somewhat boring meeting worthwhile!