Happy Halloween! This is an image of an eight foot gargoyle that graces the entrance of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. I shot the original in black and white (Canon Rebel XT with Tamron 28-200 mm lens), then added sepia toning in Photoshop.

You can actually add sepia toning in the camera if you like. Here’s the original. I think the sepia gives it a bit more oomph. (As an aside, Nikon DSLRs for some reason only shoot sepia images when put in “monochrome” mode. If you want black and white, you have to “desaturate” the image in a photo editing program.)

The statue was about two stories above the ground so I needed a long zoom to get up to it. I shot at a fairly high f-stop (16) to get good depth of field. As the Tamron has no image stabilization, I had to brace the camera on something solid (shutter speed was probably 1/30 second). Funny thing about image stabilization–many people think it enables you to shoot sharp images all the time. Not so! It simply allows you to shoot at one or two shutter speed settings slower than you would normally be able to when hand holding the camera.

For example, most people can effectively hand hold a 200 mm zoom at a shutter speed of about 1/200 second. You risk blurring the image if you use a lower shutter speed. Image stabilization might allow you to hand hold the same shot at slower speeds, say 1/125 or even 1/60 of a second.