Skyline Night Shots

Once a healthy interest in photography manifests itself in a budding photographer it will not be long before the desire to produce a good night shot will emerge. I think the main reason for this is that in order to produce a good night shot you have to actually understand photography, at least a little. In other words, producing a good night shot by getting lucky is highly unlikely, therefore a complete novice is unlikely to be able to do it. This fact by definition makes a good night shot more rare than other types of photos. Having said that it really is not very difficult to create pleasing night photos. Up to this point I have not mentioned equipment at all but now is as good a time as any to start. IN ORDER TO GET DECENT NIGHT SHOTS YOU HAVE TO USE A GOOD TRIPOD...or at least a good camera support of some kind. A good night shot requires a slower than usual shutter speed from as fast as a second or two up to several minutes or longer. It is humanly impossible to hold a camera steady at these speeds...in fact I believe it's impossible to hold the camera steady at speeds that are significantly faster than that. The one best piece of advice I can give someone on taking good night shots is this...DO NOT TAKE THE NIGHT SHOT AT NIGHT! This may sound counterintuitive but it makes sense. The time to take a good night shot is when it is becoming night. The lights in the buildings of a typical skyline tend to come on at around sunset. At this time of day there is still plenty of light in the sky which when recorded by your camera will tend to produce color in the sky (as opposed to just darkness). Because the sky is not pure darkness the outline of the buildings are much more defined and the buildings themselves contrast beautifully with the color in the sky. Also, since you are shooting on a tripod it is possible to shoot at low ISO levels which will produce a higher quality file with less noise, even in shadow areas. A couple of more tips when shooting night shots which might be helpful are as follows. If you have a remote to trigger the shutter, use it. By doing so you will further reduce the chance of camera shake, keeping your picture as sharp as possible. If you don't have a remote set the camera's drive mode to self timer, get the camera all set up, press the shutter and step back. The camera will delay a few seconds (depending on how you set your self timer) and then fire, reducing further the potential for blur. Also, many people seem to like that star like effect that a night shot might produce on a light such as a street light. By keeping your aperture at a small size such as f16 you can produce this effect. Let's take a look at the shot above. This is a night shot that was taken before it actually became night but no one would argue that it's a daytime shot. The sky has plenty of light and the blueness of it makes for a much more pleasing photo. If this shot was taken in the dead of night the edges of the buildings might have blended right in with the darkness and produced a picture that looked as though it was a bunch of floating lights in a sea of darkness. (This is not to say that a good night shot can't be done when it's totally dark...I have seen excellent shots done this way many times). The more night shots you take the better you'll get at it. One last thing...don't be afraid to give the photo the exposure it needs. Too many night shots I see are underexposed and could have used a slower shutter speed. The light at twilight is much less intense than at high noon so overexposure is harder to achieve.

Learning To See

I tend to be a curious person. If I come across something that I don't understand, or something that I don't think I know enough about, I have the need to learn more. My interest in photography evolved in this way. It was around ten years ago on a trip home to visit my parents in the suburbs of New York City that my interest in photography began. On one particularly beautiful day I decided to hop on a train and head into the city to roam around and take in some sights. Just before leaving the house I asked my mother if she had a camera and she handed me her simple point and shoot film camera. At this point in my life I had absolutely NO interest in photography. It was a great day and I shot a couple of rolls of film. A few days later I got back the most horrible, unrecognizable photos I had ever seen. They were unrecognizable because many of the pictures were of things I didn't even remember photographing! My interest was peaked and I began the quest to answer this question: "What the hell happened"? It's now ten years later and I still continue to learn almost daily. From the beginning of my quest I found that one of the skills that is most commonly suggested that the aspiring photographer learn is to develop the ability to see. At first this struck me as odd...I would think to myself "I know how to see...I have great vision"! After some time it became evident to me what learning to see really meant. Here's how it usually happens. You go out and find a nice landscape to shoot and you take a bunch of what you think are great shots. You then go home, copy the photos onto your computer hard drive and for the very first time you see that green dumpster in the corner of the frame. How the hell did I miss that? From that point on you begin to learn to see. Learning to see means learning to see what the camera sees. Learning to see what the camera sees is very different from what most people view as "seeing". The more and more you shoot the more and more you will learn to see. Eventually you will notice the little candy wrapper 20 feet away in the grass. You will notice the streak of bright light in the corner of your frame which can be fixed by slightly altering your angle...and you will also begin to see "good light". (Much more on this later). Once you learn to see as the camera sees the quality of your photos will improve dramatically. You will be on your way to becoming a proficient photographer and you will begin to see the weaknesses in other photographers photos. As you look through photos of other photographers you will begin to hear yourself ask this question over and over again..."How could she have not seen that"!!?? When your ability to see is sufficiently developed you will experience sights much more completely than the casual observer...another benefit of honing this skill. The next time you take a vacation you will remember more detail about the sights than anybody else who was with you (unless you go with a group of photographers). I will constantly come back to the idea of "seeing" as time goes on but for now I will end with a final example. The other day I went to a little league baseball game to take some shots of the action. While leaving the field as the sun was setting I noticed a lone baseball sitting on a post behind one the backstops. I took many shots that day but one of my favorites was this isolated baseball. The photo, which is at the top of this post, is a simple shot that most people would never take. Before I learned to see I never would have noticed that ball. Is it a masterpiece?...of course not. However when you learn to see you will begin to produce photos that are somewhat unique...photos that most people never even consider taking. The ability to see will come up again and again as we continue our conversation of all aspects of photography.

HDR Photography Basics

HDR (high dynamic range) photography is a relatively new technique in the world of still photography. Every photographic scene that we encounter has a range of brightness...a contrast range. The contrast range is the range of luminosity from the brightest highlights to the deepest shadows. The problem for the photographer is the camera's inability to record detail across the whole range of brightness when photographing a high contrast scene. HDR attempts and if done properly will enable the photographer to produce a single image that reproduces detail across the entire range of contrast by combining different exposures of the same subject into a single file. In the past an elaborate lighting setup may have been used to lighten the shadows, reducing the contrast range, so that details are visible in the entire photo. Now the same result can be achieved without the lights. In future posts I will get more specific but in general here is what we're doing. When faced with a high contrast scene we are taking several exposures at varying exposure settings making sure that across our exposure set we have recorded detail in all areas of the scene. That is, we have proper exposure of the highlights, mid tones, and shadows for the same exact shot across at least 3 exposures. The exposures are then combined digitally (there are many photo editing programs out there that can do this) to produce a single file with highly visible detail in all elements of the image. Let's look at the example above of the railroad cars. Three exposures were combined to produce this image. Notice that there is good detail throughout...the sky is blue, the rust in the tracks is highly visible, and even the inside of that front wheel is full of detail. The range of contrast in this scene is unrecordable by todays digital cameras (in a single exposure, that is). In order to get that detail in the wheel in one exposure the photographer would normally have to blow out the highlights...to keep the sky blue she would have to let some shadows go black. There are several steps involved in the hdr process (none of which is that complicated) and in future posts I will address them. For now let's be aware that contrasty scenes that used to be beyond the latitude of film, or beyond the ability of a digital sensor to capture, can now be recorded in several exposures and combined to produce a single image with good detail throughout the range.

Introduction

Thank you for visiting my photography blog. I hope to share my ideas and thoughts with you regarding all aspects of photography and to showcase and discuss my work, which I will often post as an example of the topic at hand. I have an extensive business background and will also often discuss business concepts that can be helpful to anyone who is interested in starting and running a photography business. (The business ideas will often be applicable to any business). I hope to help aspiring photographers and serious hobbyists refine their skills and to learn from other photographers as we interact and share. The most important thing I learned early on in pursuing my photographic vision is that the learning never ends. There is always something new, and there is always someone out there that can show you something that you haven't seen before. I welcome all of you to add to the conversation in any way that you can, including constructive criticism of my work and/or thoughts. It is April 29, 2010...let's get started.