Answer to Yesterday's Poll (AKA Night Photography) and Some Fresh Photos from Today!

APPARENTLY some people were "afraid" to vote because they thought they might be wrong! Well that's okay, but next time you definitely don't need to be afraid, especially because the vote is completely anonymous. But to those who voted, thanks for your participation! As Sarah pointed out to me, I actually tagged my Twitter post with "#nightphotography" so if you caught that, well done!

So yes, this photo was taken at 11:30pm. That may shock some of you and any of those that have dabbled with photography at night, it may not be much of a surprise. Now, the answer to your question: Well, how was this at night if it looks like it was during the day?!?

Answer: I took the photo with my 50mm f1.4 lens. Shutter speed: 3.2 seconds, Aperture: 1.4, ISO: 800. Basically I used a faster film speed, which allows you to take a faster photo (I would have needed 6.4 seconds if I used ISO 400 - half the film speed = twice the time). Also, the aperture is how "open" the lens is while taking a photo, the more open = more light coming in, but less focus on everything in view, or the depth of field. Make sense?! If not, that's okay. I would suggest taking your camera out and playing around - if you have a point and shoot you can play around with the ISO - try taking the same shot at night or dusk with ISO 100, 200, 400, 800 and look at the difference! For those using a DSLR, it is obviously much easier to tweak these settings and you can see the difference immediately if you are changing the ISO but leaving the other settings locked.

Also - use a tripod at night. Since the camera is taking a longer photo, if you are not using a tripod, I can almost guarantee it will be blurry!

Here are a couple fun shots I took today since it rained and I love taking photos of drops of water! These two photos were taken in Boca Raton, FL - where it's cloudy today and I'm not sure what to do on cloudy days here...it's always sunny! Click to enlarge to get a better view as always.

And here are some photos that I have taken over the past few years of droplets - these photos were taken in Massachusetts and New York...

Below you can see a little trick I use sometimes with water droplets - the flash. The first shot is without a flash, and the second is with. You can see the huge difference it makes when using a flash with water droplets, since each droplet catches the light from the flash - so it brings out so much detail! Sometimes you can tell you used the flash and other times it just looks cool!

These two photos are examples of using the flash and, for the most part, not really being able to tell the flash was used. They turned out to be two of my favorite photos of water droplets I have taken...

That's all for today. Hope you are having a great day and if you are bored tonight, go try some night photography! Or take some photos of water droplets today (if you can)...I would love to see them - I will even post them on my blog if you send them to me!

A Quick Poll: What time of day was this photo taken?

So if you had to guess, what time do you think the photo below was taken? (you can click to enlarge if you want)

What time of day was the photo taken?

Night Shots

Long overdue post. Hopefully I can catch up on the Haiti photos from November soon.

These are just some shots in my neighborhood I took. There was a cool fog that made the lights really bright, so I captured some of that...and the other was just for fun!

Light Painting

If any of you have seen my Flickr before, then the following post is old news! But I wanted to share this for those who haven't seen it.

Light-painting is a cool element in photography that I learned about while taking a film photography class while out in California (at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo). The teacher of the class was a cool guy and showed us some of his own work that he shot while in one of the national parks a few hours away. In a few of the photos he took at night, he used a long exposure (camera is open for a longer time, aka slow shutter speed) and used a large spotlight to literally "paint" the trees. He used color film covers to change the color of the light that he was "painting" the trees with light. I think this is a really cool intersection of PAINTING and PHOTOGRAPHY. Because it is dark out, the lens can be open longer and light is slowly let into the camera, thus you can manipulate it.



Above is an experimental shot I took while still at my house. So it wasn't perfect, but it gives the concept for what I was going to be doing. Because it was so dark, I have enough time to run in front of the camera, kneel down, and use a flashlight to literally paint the letters and/or image I am trying to create.

Hope you enjoy the photos! They take some time to get right, but once you do...it is very cool stuff.





















TRY IT AT HOME!
Grab your camera when its dark out and give it a try. You can change the exposure time by going into the manual setting (cannot do on AUTO setting). My old point and shoot camera had the option to do up to 8 seconds - which is enough time to experiment! If you have a Digital SLR it is much easier. Two options: use the M (manual) or T (shutter speed) and set the time to either a few seconds, 30 seconds if it's very dark, or use the BULB setting if you know how to (I have a shutter release cable that locks - so I can do a long-exposure shot for an hour if I wanted)

If you don't feel like going out into the middle of a city after midnight and looking quite foolish to people, then try a dark room inside first and use a flash light - or even a cell phone.

It will look something like this if you do a circular motion...