While on our 10-day Hawaiian vacation celebrating our 30th anniversary, my husband and I hiked to Ho’opi’i Falls, Kauai. Normally, we get up early for the best light, but our plans changed when we woke up to rain, so we ended up at Ho’opi’i Falls. With less-than-ideal light, it was important to find a good location that eliminated direct light.
Here is my process as I found the best composition that day.
Always walk around to find your best composition.
This question haunts me every time I use my camera, “Did I achieve focus?” It’s not as simple as zooming in on the LCD panel. For the past four years, my eye prescription changed dramatically causing cataract surgery in both eyes and as a result, I wasn’t always sure my images were in focus. My eyes see distance fairly well, but not close up (because my new lenses are for distance only). My doctor and I thought this was the best solution for the sharpest images. The only problem is that the surgery only corrected the astigmatism in one eye. As a result, I still need prescriptive adjustment to see far sharply. The downside to my new lenses is that I can’t see near.
So, for the past year, I’ve used progressive glasses to accommodate both the astigmatism and seeing near. I don’t like progressive glasses. Hiking over rocks at Watson Lake was miserable, not to mention I constantly moved my head around to find the sweet spot of focus. So, for the past two months, I returned to contacts to correct my astigmatism and readers for close-up/computer work. I’m finally back to really enjoying photography and don’t find myself saying, “Is it in focus?” after every image. Do you have a better solution to finding focus with vision problems?