Sunset from the Getty

After such a beautiful rainbow an equally vibrant sun setting behind the clouds was in order last Friday. The light was fading fast, though, and I wanted to keep a low ISO for the high contrast scene since I knew I would be boosting the shadows.

However, the Getty doesn’t allow you to use tripods, even outdoors on the grounds.

No tripod? No problem! Just a little creative use of my really right stuff bracket, my Kata strap, and a railing meant a totally stable, nice and level, uhh … railpod? Nothing like using an entire museum to keep your camera steady.

At some point I’ll share the chairpod … version one of my solution before I came up with this one. If you are a Canon shooter going to the Getty in Los Angeles, well, here’s what worked for me:

The Canon zoom lens tripod foot with a Really Right Stuff L-84 foot plate nicely clicks onto the smaller, lower railing giving it quite a bit of hold. It won’t stand on its own, but you can hand hold quite effectively using the technique. If you’re crazy about 30 second exposure like me, next try taking your camera strap, looping it up and over the railing and then back around so the body is sitting down in the strap. If your strap is long enough to be worn safari-style it might just reach perfectly like mine did. Voila, instant tripod.

The best part was doing all of this with a big ‘ole tripod strapped to my back, since I didn’t know before I came up that I couldn’t use it! They almost kicked me out to go back to the car and put it away, but playing dumb and stubborn worked well enough to let me keep it strapped to my back outside.