How To

2

How to: Abstract Photography

Behold, the majesty of the Grand Lighting Tower of the Linden Yard. Ok... so the yard is now a city dump and the lights haven't been on since we stopped building nuclear reactors, but still, from the right angle, it's pretty cool. There is a lot going on in this shot, and I had fun at every step:

The Composition

This is a classic pyramid composition, offset to the left to follow the Rule of Thirds. Pyramids are very common compositions in design and painting. they draw the eye in and focus it to a central point, giving depth to the image. One of the great things about photography is that you don't have to convince the viewer that it is real. This would make a lousy painting because it is abstract to the point of being incoherent — it would be dismissed as abstract. As a photo, you know it has to be something, so you figure it out. Abstract images loose their sense of space because the geometric shapes and strong lines destroy the organic real-world cues. By finding objects with simple lines and shapes, you can compose and image in which they dominate the space.

The Technique

This was shot with my Nikon D200 and the Nikkor 70-300mm VR f/4.5-5.6. Settings: Focal length 70mm, ISO 100, Aperture F/16, Shutter 1/80 sec, no flash. I placed the camera against the tower and worked out the composition. I took several photos at different settings with different compositions. One of the big mistakes many amateur photographers make is that they don't look at the entire image. They center the subject and shoot. I really enjoyed how I was able to get the top left light to fill the corner. Digital photos are free: take as many as you can. Keep moving the camera around and see what you can make.

The Processing

I love Adobe Lightroom. I can change an image in so many directions quickly without damaging the file or having oodles of layers to manage. I increased: exposure, recovery, blacks, vibrance, contrast, clarity and... Cranked the tonal curve and increased the luminosity and saturation of some colors. Add in a little Lens Vignetting and it's done!

18

How to Photograph a Lunar Eclipse

Took the big lens out last night and shot the moon! It's a film lens, not a digital one, so there's a little chromatic aberration going on. But you gotta love a 2000mm lens. The red is real, the reason to try to photograph a lunar eclipse is the color and the darkness of the moon.

How to Photograph the Moon

You need a big lens, the bigger, the better. Except during a lunar eclipse, the moon is really bright. Mixing it with other elements like the skyline is difficult. You either take two pictures to expose the moon and the earth-bound objects separately or let the moon burn out, like I did with this picture of the full moon over Minneapolis. To get the exposure right for the moon, check out this chart I found or just wing it and look at the LCD. The moon isn't going anywhere, so experimenting isn't difficult. If your camera has a histogram, make sure you use it with night photography, it's easy to underexpose the image since the LCD looks brighter to your dilated pupils at night. Make sure you chose a clear night, in February in Minneapolis it gets pretty cold at night. Last night it was below zero and the nice thing about that is that it's too cold for clouds to form, so it's pretty clear (snow pants rock). Back to the list: big lens, a good tripod, cable release or camera on timer mode and flashlight (cell phone works as a light too, a pretty good one in fact). The moon is on the move, so keep the shutter time down. That's not an issue with the moon normally, but it is with an eclipse. This one is at f8 (crappy lens) and 4 seconds. You can see the moon is blurred slightly in today's picture because it moved noticeably in those 4 seconds.

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Christmas Lights & Night Photography

As we head into the final stretch of the Holidays, I plan on presenting several night pictures of Christmas lights. In my comments, many of my readers are asking about how to take night photos, so here is some tips and techniques for you on how to do this.

Night Photography

Taking pictures at night is about managing very little light. The big three variables that deal with the quantity of light are ISO, aperture and shutter speed. ISO (pronounced eye-so, it's not an acronym) determines the sensor sensitivity. A higher ISO allows for low light conditions, but at a high price. High ISO images have increased noise, which appears as grainy patterns on the image. Since most outdoor night shots have big black skies, the noise can be really obvious, so stay down to low ISOs, like 100. Aperture is your creative variable. The bigger the aperture, the narrower the depth of field. The number of the aperture is the denominator in a fraction, so the smaller the number the bigger the aperture it represents. With a big aperture of 2.8 or 3.5 you can focus on something close and have the background out of focus like this, or this. With a small aperture, you can keep lots of things in focus. Today's picture above was taken at a smaller aperture (f 11) to keep lots of subjects in focus. With tighter aperture, there is less light coming in, but it's all in focus. Play around with this, you can get neat effects at wide apertures, but f 8 and higher help keep all the lights in focus. So now that I have told you to set the first two variables at the most light-demanding settings, we come to shutter speed. It's going to take a long exposure to make this work, and I mean a second or more. Some of my pics that you have seen are ten seconds (holidazzle pics) or even 20 seconds. These long exposures can also give you fun effects like car light lines, but be careful, trees moving in the wind will blur. How do I work with a long exposure? Get a good tripod. Those light weight cheap tripods are easy to carry, but my favorite is big heavy Manfrotto. Not only is it heavy and stable, it makes for a good weapon, so I feel better skulking around at night in the big city. Your camera has to remain perfectly still for the whole time the shutter is open — big tripod, good footing. Then you have to be careful while pushing the shutter. I place my hand on top of the camera and gently push the trigger then leave my hand on the camera, play around, find whatever way you can do it without shaking the camera works for you. How about a cable release? Yes, that's a good idea, but every camera I bought needs a different one and they can cost $50 or more. I had one a month ago, but I was using it when it was 25 degrees out (not cold here) and it broke! Since then I've found with a gentile technique and a good tripod, I don't need it. The amount of ambient light can vary a lot in the winter, if it's humid, the light can scatter in the sky and light everything like a cloudy day. This will give you a lot more light than you realize. For the first few times, take a lot of pictures and shoot brackets (several pictures in a row with different settings i.e. different shutter speeds). It takes a while to get a feel for it, but you learn a lot. If your camera has a histogram, use it to see how the exposure is going. Judging the exposure by looking at the LCD is difficult at night, the LCD is so relatively bright at night that you might think it's a good shot only to come home and find it way under exposed. White balance is very tricky at night. It depends on what lights are around. This one ended up at around 2800K. So if you can, shoot in RAW and determine the white balance later. I can talk about RAW at a later time, this post is getting way to long. There's a pretty good explanation of night photography, I didn't realize how much I was doing until I wrote this. It becomes intuitive after a while. The problem is that when it's 3 degrees out, it's hard to relax and think out a shot and then wait 10 seconds for an exposure. My hands were seriously hurting by the time I stopped shooting these pictures. Oh yeah, one more thing, this was shot with the Tamron 11-18mm Ultra-Wide.