Aamir Zakaria Photography

Living on the edge — literally!

Being a land­scape pho­tog­ra­ph­er can lit­er­al­ly involve liv­ing on the edge!

I’ve been sift­ing through some images of me at work as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to be post­ed on Stu­dio 35’s web­site.  Although this isn’t the great­est image in the world from a tech­ni­cal stand­point, it does a good job of rep­re­sent­ing part of my “work eth­ic”.  I can be dri­ven to extremes at times just to cap­ture “the shot”.

This was cap­tured at Table Rock in Robert Louis Steven­son State Park, Cal­is­to­ga, Cal­i­for­nia.  A hik­ing bud­dy took this with her iPhone.

I’ve strug­gled with find­ing the right way to car­ry equip­ment while hik­ing.  In this case, I was car­ry­ing my tri­pod in my hand, and scram­bling rocks simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.  I end­ed up sprain­ing the pinky in my right hand when I took a brief tum­ble, which both­ered me for months, espe­cial­ly when some­one tried to give me a firm hand­shake.  It got to where I refused to shake cer­tain peo­ple’s hands to avoid re-injury!

Luck­i­ly, I did­n’t fall off that cliff.  It was inter­est­ing to look at this shot after­wards.  When you’re at the edge hik­ing, it feels pret­ty scary, but it looks even scari­er when I see myself on a photograph.In terms of the pho­to, the left side is way too blown out by the sun.  It’s pret­ty hard to get a pic­ture of the sun that isn’t blown out, but so much of the sur­round­ing sky is blown out as well.  This is a prob­lem I’ve noticed with oth­er panora­mas I’ve tak­en with iPhones.

For exam­ple, here’s one I took of Kir­by Cove in Marin Coun­ty.  I love the shot, but the blown out sky both­ers me.

Here’s anoth­er exam­ple, tak­en in the Marin Headlands:

Here’s one where the blown out sky actu­al­ly adds to the shot: