Showing posts with label night photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label night photography. Show all posts
Night Photography
If you're like me, your attempts at night photography consist of shooting an hour or two after dusk, sticking to fast lenses, and hand-holding until it just isn't possible to take a sharp photo any more.
Now, I'll admit that this technique does have its benefits. For one thing, I've gotten really good at keeping the camera steady. For another, I have developed my after-dark eye. It has often been one of my favorite times of the day to take pictures.
But I never brought out the big guns, the one item you really need to take a great night photograph: a tripod. That's right, folks. Surprisingly, it does make it a heck of a lot easier to take a good night photograph. No real surprise there. The surprise for me was how much better the photos are - it's amazing! No real noise! No blur, not even a bit! And such great detail. So let me break it all down for you - it's pretty simple, but it bears saying.
1. First, you've got to choose a location. And you've got to have some light - a full moon, streetlights, building lights, or your own lights/flashlights, but you must have some light.
2. Wear warm clothing. This is not strictly speaking a photography tip, but trust me, you'll be glad you did. For example, I will definitely bring some fingerless gloves next time, because my hands were so cold I couldn't really feel the buttons on the camera.
3. Find your subject, choose your lens, set up your tripod and frame the shot the way you want it. Make sure your tripod is shake-proof. Use your photo bag as a little extra weight on the hook at the bottom, if you've got one.
4. Think about whether you'll have anything moving in your frame, like grasses, or water, or such. It'll most likely be blurred quite a bit. Are you ok with that? If not, you might want to come back and shoot it another time.
5. Set your settings. This shot was at f/4, ISO 160 (the cleanest ISO on my camera, yours may be different), and 30 seconds. Shoot raw so you'll be able to massage the files a bit afterwards. In particular, your white balance will probably need a little work.
6. Maximize your sharpness. Use mirror lockup, and either use your self timer to take the shot, or some sort of remote or cable release. Remember that the vibration from your finger pushing the shutter button can make a big difference in the overall sharpness of the image.
7. Take a few! Look at your histogram. Make sure you're not blowing out your highlights. Check the overall exposure - too dark? Too bright?
8. Celebrate! Then compose the next shot and do it all again.
EDIT: I forgot one key step! Now if you're shooting Nikon, you auto focus whizzes, this may not apply to you. But if you're Canon like me, you must must MUST focus manually. This is the only thing I use my live view for. Use live view, zoom in, and get your manual focus just perfect. It's worth it to bring a flashlight to shine on your subject at this time to make it easier to see if the focus is good.
*Finally! A post on photography. I'm going to try to continue posting informational posts like this on Tuesdays. Any topics you'd like to see? Hit me up in the comments below.*
San Francisco Nights
I don't know if you're familiar with Chris Isaak, but I went through a phase when I was about sixteen where I bought nearly every one of his albums. An unabashed crooner, there are few in the music business who can sing like him. One of my favorite albums by him is 'San Francisco Days' and the eponymous track closes something like this,"I'm heading for that Golden Gate, hoping I won't be too late to find the one that I still love . . . San Francisco nights."
And for me this image perfectly reflects those words, that melody. The soft, muted tones of a San Francisco night. The kind of fog that almost embraces you, muffling sounds and blurring your vision. For me, home.
Waiting Outside
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| SF Courthouse. Exposure info: 85mm f/1.8 1/40s ISO 1250 |
Oh, arches. You get me every time. Not only are you incredibly strong, you're quite aesthetically pleasing as well.
Wish we all could be so lucky.
Cityscape
CIty Night
But what about you?
(PS Happy Birthday Hannah!)
Cinematic
I feel like your Oscar nominees, in general, try much harder to make it look like natural light.Your blockbusters, on the other hand, are not quite so restrained. Multiple light sources? Check. Looks like no natural light anywhere in the world? Check! Gels? Oh hells yes. Completely different lighting in exactly the same place depending on whether the character is male or female? Double and triple check. Next time you're watching a movie that has a scene with a male and female actor, check it out. Chances are almost 100% that the lighting on the chick will be a lot softer than the lighting on the dude.
I won't lie, sometimes I watch entire scenes in movies and the only thing I pay attention to is the shape and number of catchlights in the characters' eyes. This may be some kind of dangerous obsession.
One movie in particular that flouted the bad movie = fun light rule was Inception. Great film, gorgeous light. I dare you to watch parts of it without the dialogue just to look at the lighting.
Anyway, I felt like this image had a bit of a cinematic feel to it. Let me know what you think.
Photoblogs I Love
Accessible by Uwe Eischens Incredibly well processed, often surreally beautiful landscape and intimate landscape shots. His pictures often seem to glow.
Cornforth Images Some of the best landscape and nature photography around, in my opinion.
Darwin Wiggett A cross between a photography blog and a photoblog, but still more space given to images than text. Great work from Darwin himself as well as many other featured photographers.
Eli Reinholdtsen GREAT reflection images, that's her specialty, but also some wonderful street work. I find her blog a good reminder that everything doesn't have to be perfect or straight to be interesting and beautiful.
Tafari's Mindspill Sometimes controversial, always entertaining, and some good photos as well. I particularly enjoy his work with flowers.
The Still Image With Crash Taylor I really like the premise of this blog, which is to take great photos from all kinds of photographers and have the photographers themselves speak about the process of making the image. My only beef with it is that Crash always has one of his images in the post as well, and frankly they're usually not as good or as interesting. But that's probably being a bit picky.
Anyway, please feel free to leave your favorite photo blogs in the comments! (Not that my Google Reader needs to subscribe to anything else, quite the opposite!)
One Way
The man semi-thanked us and seemed about to go on his way. Then he paused. "Are you for the redistribution of wealth?" he broached, off-handedly, as if he were commenting on the weather.
I was a bit taken aback. "That's a pretty general question, isn't it?" I asked.
He seemed confused that I might think so. "No . . . " he hedged.
I continued, "I mean, what wealth, and to who?"
"Oh, all of it."
"Like Robin Hood?" I queried. He looked blank. "Robin Hood?" I repeated.
"Oh, yeah! Exactly." And then he handed us each a flyer, and said, "It's going to happen soon. You're the 59th person I've given this flyer to. Everyone's excited about it."
I wasn't sure what to say, so I paused a moment. He added, "Anyway, I'm on my way to the Apple store. You said turn right on Market, right?"
He walked away.
I shouted after him, "Enjoy the Apple Store!"
Anatomy of An Image, Week 7
Time of Day
The blue hour, civil twilight, whatever you want to call it. Basically this is the time about half an hour after sunset, and for obvious reasons it's one of my favorite times to take pictures. Since it's winter, this particular time it was about 5:45, but obviously that depends on the time of year and your latitude. If you live near the equator, this will always be the same time for you, but you won't have that cool difference between summer and winter light, and you'll never have incredibly long shadows near the middle of the day. But I may be getting a bit off topic here.
The Story
After I moaned about not having anyone to shoot with now that Miguel has flown back to Colombia, my dad offered to come walk around the city with me and take some shots. Or rather, I would take some shots and he would just chill out. Since it was Dec 23rd, downtown SF was mobbed with people doing their last minute shopping, so we decided to make our way to the waterfront via the historic F line where it would be a little quieter. When we arrived the light was just getting fantastic. First I took some blah shots of the ferry building, and then I took some shots of the Bay Bridge, and then I decided I wanted to shoot the traffic against the buildings, the traffic blurred and the buildings sharp.
The Specs
Shutter Speed: 1 second. To make the passing cars properly blurry but still identifiable.
Aperture: f/16, to get the necessary shutter speed and also make the lights go all starry.
Focal Length: 17mm on an APS-C crop sensor, equivalent to about 28mm on a 35mm sensor camera.
ISO: 800. Why? I'm not sure. Seems high. I guess I really wanted f/16, and it's tough hand-holding for longer than a second.
What I Like
I like the colors. Blue and yellow, especially the versions of those that you find at twilight, always work for me. I like how the yellow of the streetlights is echoed in the yellow of the taxi. I always prefer my lights to star like this, so I like that. I also like the perspective. I was sort of squatting on the pavement and I think this would have been a different photo taken at normal person height. Also, I like that arrow in the corner. It just speaks to me a bit.
What I Don't Like
The photo is a little busy for my taste. Simpler is almost always better, and this is not really simple enough. If I could cut out about half of those trees, I would do it. Also I don't like that huge pole in the center, and I really don't like that the light on it is pretty blown out. I'm kind of on the fence about whether I'm ok with the building lines converging. It doesn't bother me too much, but this would have been cooler shot with a tilt/shift lens for sure. Also it's not as deadly sharp as I would like. It's ok, especially considering the speed I was hand-holding at, but it could be better.
Anyway, as always, I'm interested to hear what you think. Let me know in the comments!
The Ferry Building, and Resolutions
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| SF Ferry Building, tonight. We had some LOVELY weather in SF today. I may have even seen the sun out for hours at a time! |
And fortunately for all of us, the week is over. (Unless you have to work tomorrow. In which case, that sucks. My sincerest apologies.)
Anyway, it's been kind of an amazing year. Back in January I made some resolutions, and for a while it seemed like they might not happen. But . . . then actually they mostly did.
Shoot More Portraits. I can still improve on this one, but I have made progress. Like with Miguel. And Barrie. And Lara. And a few others that I haven't blogged. I've been braver about sticking my camera in other people's faces, and that's only to the good.
Get Paid. I did it! I'll be sharing the gory details (well, some of them) with you all soon enough. But I have finally made some money from my passion. Yes!!
Increase My Percentage of Keepers. Well, this one's tough. I think I have. But honestly, if I haven't, I'm not fussed. What I feel I have done, which is more important, is improved my overall photography. And that counts more.
Print More. I did. And then I made a book. And I taped my prints all over my walls. Check! What I really need now is more wall space. I'm kind of running out.
What's up for next year? You'll have to wait until January to find out . . . .
*So, how did you do on your resolutions? Feel free to confess or brag in the comments section.*
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