Oaklands Park

I have taken quite a few photos at Oaklands Park in Murfreesboro. Although I think it is one of the most beautiful places in Murfreesboro, I hardly ever see other photographers there. And as a photographer I couldn’t ask for a better place to escape from the overwhelming number of photographers present in other “pretty” places of Murfreesboro (i.e. Cannonsburgh).

I was taking photos at Oaklands yesterday for another project, and I noticed the purple flowers that you can see at the bottom of the photo. I was in a bit of a rush, so I decided I would come back this morning and take my time to find the best angle to take the photo. This worked out great, as we had a nice rain throughout the night, which made the colors significantly brighter than yesterday, especially the greens.

If you live in Murfreesboro, you know that we don’t have many epic landscapes around here, which makes it twice as hard for a photographer wanting to get the same rich landscape photos that you can find in places like Colorado or Utah. On the other hand, I always found it helpful in learning how to think through composing a landscape shot and how to use ultra wide-angle lenses. I think it’s fair to say that composing a photo is still one of the most frustrating aspects of photography for me, while I am beginning to feel more and more confident with an ultra wide-angle lens.

In any case, the point I am trying to make is that while the scene was still very beautiful, it wasn’t as big as the photo makes it seem. One would have to look for it, and I doubt many people would even notice it unless they saw the photo beforehand. But this is where ultra wide-angle lenses, like my Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 and many hours of practicing with it, come in very handy to make the scene look larger and richer than it was in reality. In fact, it took me teaching about a dozen photography classes before I realized the full extent of what wide-angle lenses do.

Speaking of photography classes, if you are wondering what happened to the photography classes for October and November at Made in Murfreesboro, the new schedule will be posted sometime within the next week or so; the best thing to do is to fill out our standby form and you’ll get an email as soon as the new classes are up.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

Technical Stuff: Nikon D300 with Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 and Hoya Digital HD Polarizer on a Manfrotto tripod. ISO 100, f/8, 0.8 second exposure.