Ohiopyle is sort of a mythical place for me. It's where I learned to love the outdoors and hiking, and the 50 minute drive south from my hometown always felt like a great adventure while growing up.
Ohiopyle is an area formed as the Youghiogheny River cut through an ancient range of the Appalachian mountains, forming a valley where numerous creeks flow into the river, amazing and fairly accessible hikes end with dramatic overlooks, and, importantly, where I had my first Red Bull from the convenience store in town.
I'm home visiting my brother, who is a more experienced photographer than I am, and has a neat repertoire of gear I love borrowing whenever I get a chance. Today I grabbed his tilt-shift lens (I think it's the 24mm f/3.5). I thought it might make for a fun effect for nature photos as we hiked around the area.
Enter the Nerd Zone!
For the uninitiated, tilt-shift lenses are the ones that make the Instagram-friendly effect of a single zone sharply in focus as the rest of the photo blurs away. They're really meant to shift the plane of focus away from the plane of the camera lens; that is to say, you can point it upward at a building and keep the entire front of a building in focus, where this would normally be slightly difficult. If you're feeling nerdy, this is the Scheimpflug principle. They also help you correct for converging verticals, which is when parallel lines (in the prior example, the sides of the building) point toward each other due to your perspective.
Anyway, here are my favorite shots from an afternoon spent around some of my favorite hills in the world with some cool photo gear. I think it all worked pretty well.
