Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens Sample Pictures

Saint Patricks Cathedral in New York City is a spectacular piece of architecture. The problem, from a photographical standpoint, is that it is always full of people. The solution is to shoot upwards. The other problem is that it is extremely dark inside. Image stabilization allowed this picture to be taken handheld.

A row of large trees and their fallen leaves glow yellow against a blue sky and green grass. A circular polarizer was used for this picture.

New York City has some of the greatest Christmas decorations. These giant Christmas balls are stacked in a fountain across the corner from Radio City Music hall. I was sitting on the side of the fountain shooting handheld for this 1/3 second shot.

The grand entrance of a university building stands against a circular-polarizer-caused super-blue sky.

Fall yellow leaves frame a black lamp post against a blue sky. A circular polarizer was used for this shot.

Large windows on this house reflect the sunset-caused orange sky. This picture was shot handheld in a crouched position with a 1-second shutter speed.

85mm on an APS-C/1.6x body is a great focal length for head shot style portraits. With this lens, zoom out to 15mm and grab an environmental portrait at the same time.

Green on the ground and a heavy tree trunk 1/3 of the way into the frame anchor this otherwise busy but colorful woods scene.

A wide angle lens focused close provides a unique perspective of this Golden Retriever pooch - complete with a motion-blurred tongue.

The famous Radio City Music Hall in New York City as decorated for Christmas.

The sun sets over the very-photogenic plumes of Maiden Grass.

Bright yellow leaves stain the bright green grass they have fallen onto.

Flags flying in the strong winds at Rockefeller Center in New York City are motion-blurred during the 1/6 second exposure used to capture this image. Christmas lights and sky scrapers provide the background. This shot was captured handheld.

As I have said before, getting good images at Saint Patricks Cathedral in New York City is hard. This is not because of the the architecture itself (it is amazing), but because of the huge crowds typically in the building. So once again, I shot up to avoid the other visitors.

A young rider smiles in the late-day sunlight. By shooting from a low angle, I was able to remove all background distractions. The number of lines intersecting the image border has also been minimized.

Ricketts Glenn State Park, PA has so many beautiful waterfalls that I could spend weeks shooting there. This shot is of one of the larger falls deep in the valley during an especially strong flow. My daughter was shooting with me on this day and was complaining about how loud the water was.

Moving in close with a wide angle focal length emphasizes the foreground subjects - the pumpkins - and de-emphasizes the background subjects - the house. The deep blue sky is courtesy of a circular polarizing filter.
 
A shutter speed of 1/250 was not needed for this shot, but I was shooting moving subjects (guess what they were) before and after grabbing this shot. ISO 200 is so clean that there is nearly no consequence for this setting.

Shawnee Falls is one of many beautiful waterfalls in Ricketts Glen State Park, PA. I was near the edge of a ledge for this shot. This position allowed the layered rocks on the right side of the image to grow in relation to the rest of the subjects in the frame.

A late day sun casts a warm light on these backlit grass plumes.
 
An 85mm lens with a maximum f/5.6 aperture does not create the most strongly-blurred backgrounds, but with a close subject and a distant and carefully-selected background, a very smooth image is the result.

I decided to line up the pair of tree trunks along the left side of the frame while the large rock formed the base for my image.

This wide angle portrait of a girl and her horse was taken from a far enough distance to avoid significant perspective distortion, but close enough retain the viewer's sense of presence in the picture.

Finding this big leaf with a drop of water in it called for a photo. I carefully aligned the lens so that the relatively shallow depth of field (due to the close focus distance) would falls across the plane of the leaf. I rotated the camera so that the veins in the leaf were angled throughout the frame.

These two-toned leaves positioned closely together created a pattern that I liked. Lighting is sunlight diffused by a greenhouse.

Finding a patch of beautiful flowers can make finding a great subject easy. The work comes in positioning one or more of the flowers so that the background supports the subject. Here I positioned the foreground Black-Eyed Susan flower so that it was about 1/3 of the way into the frame and centered it between the three most-visible background flowers. Using the longest-available-in-this-lens focal length, a wide open aperture with a close focus distance allows the background to go blurred. Lighting is from a cloudy sky.

Your neighborhood greenhouse is calling you. Greenhouses create ideal macro and flower photography lighting almost any time the sun is up. And they are typically filled with beautiful subjects. Get permission to take your camera to your local greenhouse (and buy a couple of flowers to insure good will towards your next visit).

To get a happy subject, capture them with something they love.

This colorful flower was captured in a greenhouse - which delivered a very soft light - which allows the natural colors of the flower to create the patterns in the image.

The tight green growth of these not-yet blooming flowers create an even busyness that I like.