Jackson W.F. Chu

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My Blog

Analyzing my Photography Habits

8/12/2016

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This year, I spent 6 weeks on a science-based adventure to and from Antarctica. I knew my trip was going to be one filled with spectacular scenery and wildlife so I planned and packed about 20 lbs of my photography gear with me to document my journey and to maximize every photo opportunity.

In total, I ended up capturing 111 GB of travel, nature, and science imagery (photos and videos) on my personal cameras. During my trip, I only had brief moments to scan through my images for quality control and to do a quick once-over for deletions and post-processing. I ended up bringing home ~3,800 RAW images captured on my primary dslr which I used to analyze patterns in my shooting behavior (scientists gotta science!).  I took a quick look at the metadata of my RAW images to get a sense of my most commonly used focal lengths while I was in Antarctica and to get a sense of the patterns in my shooting habits.
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The two biggest peaks are at 50 mm and 100 mm which takes some additional context to understand. A lot of my images were macro photos which is part of my scientific methods for documenting the diversity of small invertebrates I observed in Antarctica. These photos were captured using my 50 mm prime lens which was most often mounted with a 2x macro-focusing teleconverter. 
At the telephoto range, the peak at 150 mm was the maximum focal length on my 50-150 mm telephoto zoom. I only sparingly used my 135-400 mm telephoto zoom because of its slow minimum aperture (F4-5.6) and average sharpness which made it some what useless in the low light conditions that is characteristic of winter in Antarctica. I found myself cropping photos I had taken at 150 mm (F2.8, ISO 800) because the results were better than trying to use the 135-400 mm. A cropped photo taken with a significantly sharper lens was better than a soft photo taken at a higher focal length.

A sharp lens with a focal length of 300 mm or greater would have  been useful for my trip. Perhaps a 300 mm F4 prime would have helped me photograph the large charismatic wildlife (penguins, seals, dolphins) although sightings of them were few and far between. The trade-off would have been the additional weight - something I definitely noticed a lot during my trip. I also noticed my constant need to switch lenses because of how I would photograph a scene. I would often take photos at a wide angle then switch to a telephoto focal length to focus more on the details of a site. ​

The big question is, where do I adventure next with my cameras?
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Zodiac operations in Antarctica!

8/12/2016

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2016.07.21. During one of our short cruises out from Palmer Station, we searched high and low for sea ice to sample. While in the Gerlache Strait, we managed to get out on the small vessels (zodiacs) and spent some time sampling while off the LM Gould mothership.

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Exploring the Western Antarctic Peninsula

7/16/2016

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2016.07.11 - 13. This week, ice cover prevented us from using the smaller zodiacs for scientific excursions from the station.  It wasn't until our first multi-day cruise that we were able to venture off station to do some field sampling and exploration of the Western Antarctic Peninsula.

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    Jackson W.F. Chu

    Jackson is a marine biologist, photographer, and dog-owner. ​This blog will try to be heavy on the photos and light on the text.

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