Didn’t make it to the mountains today, just had a day in Munich hanging out with Niall.  We took some cameras and went for a sight seeing tour around the English Garden. Water was still high and pumping through the Eisbach. A whole bunch of folk were watching, as usual. Most were tourists with point and shoot cams. I’d say there were about 10 folk on either side with pretty serious shooting gear. Top line Canon gear and L glass. Couple of Nikons. We sat and watched for a while and what struck me most was that they were all shooting the same shit. Standing side by side a couple of meters back from the water with a 24-70 or 70-200 setup. One guy was on the other side with an on cam flash. So 15 – 20 folks all shooting the same shit. So I thought how fucking sad is that. I bolted the luscious Nikkor 10.5mm fisheye onto my D300 and walked down to the bank, got on my knees and held the cam about 2 inches above some serious cubic feet per second. Surf dude on the other side clocked it, surfed over and pulled a move above the cam. I took about 4 shots blind then pulled the cam away before getting splashed. Was in Manual mode, ISO800, f/4, 1/1000th – which wasn’t perfect, had to lighten up the foreground a little. Was a high DR subject anyway. Could have shot some more but Niall was wanting to get to a beer garden for a strong Apfelsaft.  But the point is this: when you see 20 photogs shooting the same shit, then make sure you do something different.  The cam at arms length shooting blind technique is one I’ve used a lot for the biking shots, with an ultra wide the DOF/sharpness is a no brainer and it’s hard to not get the subject in the frame.  Some photogs hate shooting blind, just won’t do it, but for some situations I think it works out great.

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