Written by I pass City Hall on my way to work, and have been wanting to shoot the trees across the street for a few weeks now. Finally got to play with them a few nights ago.
Posts in category Night Photography
Funnin’ Downtown
Back at it, Full Swing
I went weeks this summer without picking up the camera. Nothing to inspire me. The free portrait shoot I set up at Lakeview went bust. Not learning anything shooting sunsets and the Lighthouse over and over. I bought a couple new filters, a UV and my neutral density filter arrived yesterday. But many days have passed in between posts, and I had zip that was really “new”. Suddenly, in the space of a week, I’m behind the 8-ball. I’ve got pics that need edited and watermarked from the zoo, a church in Elyria, more macro shots, and now the Fair. Went with Michael, Kristen and Colton last night. Kristen and I drove separately so we could stay late. She needed to try her hand at long exposures with the tripod. And she did a great job and had a ton of fun doing it. Me? Just a sample of what I shot last night. Gotta get back to editing everything else. Feels good to be backed up.
Long Exposure Zoom Out….
Or, what I’d like to call, “The Matt Dempsey Effect”. After Matt’s explanation of the technique, Kristen told me of some houses near Clearview on Broadway that I needed to see. A few nights before Christmas, we went for a drive and I broke out the tripod and tried The MD Effect. Not as slick as Matt’s but still kinda slick.
Guest Blogger: Matt Dempsey
After seeing his photography over the course of the last two-and-a-half years, I had offered Matt the chance to post here. When I saw a recent batch of pics, I knew he had to share them. He sent me a set he took at Lakeview Park, of the light display there. He described what he did:
In order to get the effect for these pictures, this is what I did: Having a tripod is a must due to the fact that I used shutter speeds that ranged from 1 second until 20 seconds. The ISO was set at 200 and the apertures were from f/8 – f/32. I simply set the camera to the aperture to what I wanted, focused on the subject, and pushed the shutter. When the shutter is pressed, I then simply zoomed the lens from 18mm – 55mm and vice versa. Doing this causes a plain scene to come to life.
A Little Camera Fun
I’ve taken pics of the lights at Lakeview for “Light Up Lorain” over the years, and this season there’s a new addition to the display. A revolving wheel blinking different colors can be seen from West Erie Avenue. I drove through two mornings ago on the way home from work. I want to go back and play a little more with it, as it was quite cold and very wet that a.m.
The video itself is not particularly impressive. But what you can do with your camera is another story…
With the ISO at 3200 and an .8 second exposure, if you click on the photo for a larger view, you’ll see that the strand lights in the background are curlicues now.
With the exposure at 1.3, the lights get brighter, but a little messier, and not as crisp. A tripod will definitely make this a nicer shot at this setting.
Exposure is now set at 2.5, and with a little wiggle in the camera, you get this explosion of light and colored lines.
The same settings, but with a slight movement to the left, gives the illusion of movement to this wheel of light.
Not every shot you take has to be precise and neat and organized. Get out and have some fun!
Maybe I can get Matt Dempsey to share some of the fun he’s had with simply adjusting the lens during a long exposure…..
Happy Halloween!!
Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. “G” for their annual Halloween display!!
And down the street on the other side was this gem!
Late Night Doodling
I’ve wanted to do some late night shooting, and saw some things that folks had done with flashlights. When my daughter asked me to pick up her friend from South Lorain one night, I agreed on the condition that they help me out with the pics. Imagine my surprise when she told me Alainey has wanted to get in on some pics! So, down to Lakeview we went, where I could count on a dark background, and I wanted to retry a shot. The sidewalk shoots didn’t turn out like I was looking for, but were still a little interesting. The others were kinda neat. Hope you enjoy.
Since Kristen did the majority of the drawing, I let her sign her name to her handiwork. Thanks, Hon!
Lorain County Fair 2010
I submitted a number of photos to the MJ for their ‘pics at the Fair’ link. That was done Friday? Still nothing. Thanks, MJ. So, here’s a sample of what I took, and a slideshow of everything else.
More to come….
PhotoPhun? FotoFun? Hmmm..
Buster’s Momma and I are still running with the LoCoBuHoBpppPbbb thingy-ma-bob Challenge-O whatchamacallit. Figured if no one wanted to play with us, we’d do it ourselves. (Watch it!) So, since both of us are familiarizing ourselves with new cameras, we’re throwing challenges at each other, so we learn something new. Momma wanted me to get some night shots, especially since there was a full moon forecast, with clear skies, this past week.Well, the night of the full moon, it was REALLY CHILLY outside. And warm inside. Guess where I didn’t go that night? Yup.So, a day or so later, it was ‘shorts weather.’ My favorite. And that night I was outside and played and got these:
First night shot. The timer defaults to a 13 second shutter exposure. Oooh rah, right? Exciting. Not.
Check it out! I can go up to 60 seconds on the shutter!! You can see the little dots are now stretched out a little by the length of time, and the earth’s movement. This can get fun now!
Momma asked me for some shots of the moon. I don’t have a gargantuan telephoto for my camera yet (four-figure price on those), so rather than get a small dime-sized pic of the moon, with little definition, I started playing. This one came out the best, and my daughter agreed I shouldn’t subject you to the others.
Still trying to do something close to what Momma challenged me with, I went to Lakeview one night. I’m working on figuring out how to layer and ‘stack’ these star shots, but if you click on the above pic, you’ll see the trails of the movement. I think I have 5 or 6 pics stacked above.
While I was down there, I took some shots of the Beach House, just to tinker with. It was too dark (I realized later) to do what I’d hoped, but while goofin’ off, I got the next shot. There were a lot of people at Lakeview between 10 and 11pm that night, quite a few of which were walking the boardwalk and the beach. So, I shot this, which I thought turned out well. The woman on the left is so well defined because she stopped to light a smoke.
(Sorry I forgot to add this one when I originally posted Sunday night.)
To give you a better idea of the movement of the stars, I put the shots I took into a slideshow. Click to play below.
Don’t forget to check out what Momma did with her challenge.
