I love taking long exposures with my Sony A7RII and Zeiss Batis 18mm. There’s something magical about long exposure photography that draws me in every time. Long exposure photography allows me to capture the moment in a dreamy ethereal feel and adds a rich depth to my photos that I always try to achieve.

This image was captured on the Columbia River by Chinook Landing in Oregon. This state park is a popular boat ramp and picnic area and you’ll alway find people launching their boats here to head out to the Columbia River for the day. I saw these piers using Google Earth which is a fantastic tool for scouting areas and thought this would be a great opportunity for a long exposure shot with my Sony A7RII. This weather was perfect as it was cloudy with small sun breaks so I drove down there to take a look. To get to the piers I had to hike down to the beach and walk along the shore to get closer. It was a fairly easy walk and the water was very calm. Usually there are barges coming up and down the river creating a lot of waves but today it was nice and calm.

One of the coolest feature of the Sony A7RII is the ability to recharge the camera via the micro USB multi-terminal port using an external battery pack. This is quite useful if you’re going to be out in the field for an extended period of time or if you plan to do time lapse photography.

Since the Sony A7RII is a mirrorless camera, the body is much smaller to its DSLR counterparts. With the reduced size the battery itself is a lot smaller which means you don’t get as much power as a regular size battery. A lot of photographers complain about the battery life but to me I always carry extra batteries so I don’t see this much as a problem. I think most photographers carry extra gear with them anyways and batteries should be high on that list.

Most of the external battery packs today are quite powerful and can recharge your devices multiple times before it needs recharging itself. Back in August when I was in Sydney I found how useful these external battery packs were. Since we were staying about an hour’s drive outside of the city, we would take the train in and spend most of the day sightseeing and exploring. Having external battery packs allowed us to recharge our phones and cameras without worry. I didn’t have to conserve the battery in my camera and could shoot as many images as I wanted. Oh and trust me there was a lot of images that needed to be captured while down under in OZ.

My standard setup when I’m out in the field is the Sony A7RII paired with my Zeiss Batis 18mm. I prefer to capture images as wide as possible which allows me the flexibility to edit my photos later without compromising the quality. This is the best setup for me in my workflow but I highly suggest and encourage you to explore options for your own photography.

We went to visit Powell’s books in downtown Portland during the Christmas shopping season. This place is very popular so I was expecting to shoot very quickly without bothering other people. I really love my Sony A7RII due to its lightweight body and high 42MP full frame sensor.  I don’t like to lug around something so big and heavy and I prefer to be discreet as possible.

I haven’t been in this bookstore for so long that I didn’t realize how much it has changed. There are a few levels in this store and each room is colored to designate the topic of books it housed. I knew I wanted to capture an image with the sunlight so I headed off to the side of the store where the sun was beaming into the aisles.