This was easily the brightest day I have experienced in a long time. In case you were wondering, I added very little contrast to this photo. Most of that is natural. So, with such a huge amount of light, I decided to zone focus.
I have been playing around with zone focusing for a few weeks now, but this was a great day for it. I can set the aperture to f/22 for a very deep depth of field and still have a fairly fast shutter speed. Actually, the depth of field is so deep in this photo, I almost feel like it was composited: nice crisp clouds all the way to the arms in the foreground.
I always wondered how to use that depth of field calculator on my lenses. Once I found out, it has been a very valuable tool. I did not have to focus any of these shots. As long as my subject was more than one meter away, I was safe. So, with metering on manual and focus pre-set, I could just shoot away with nothing more than composing. Get in the zone!
