Night Photography & Light Painting PDF
Preview Night Photography & Light Painting
Night Photography & Light Painting Tricks, tips and secrets to improve your night photography By Brent Pearson Determining sunrise and sunset tim es 27 Table of Contents Ideal time to photograph at nig ht 30 Different Types of Night Photograp hy 31 Photographing Light s 31 Introduction 4 Photographing Landscapes 32 Foreword from the author 5 Startrails 34 A Logical Progression 7 Software for Post Processing Startra ils 35 The Buzz of Light Painting 8 Processing Your Night Images 36 The Different Types of Lightpainting 9 A Photographer Who Does Some Beautiful Light Painting 10 Part 2: Light Paintin g 37 Security 11 Equipment 39 Light source s 40 Part 1 - Night Photograph y 12 My Journey of Experimentatio n 40 The Camera 13 Building a light wand 48 Tripod 13 What you need to bu y 48 Cable release 13 Assembling the Light Wan d 50 Torch 14 Other lighting Source s 54 Spare Camera Batter y 15 Light Painting technique s 56 Accessories 15 Light Painting Method # 1: A-ilnl -camera 56 What You Need to Know 16 Light Painting Method # 2: Isola-taend-blend 57 Familiarity with your camer a 16 Light Painting Ste-pby-step 59 Turning Off Long Exposure Noise Reducti on 17 Setting up 59 F-stops and understanding exposu re 18 The base exposur e 61 How to read your camera histogra m 19 Selective lightin g 61 The Challenges of Night Photograp hy 21 Light painting technique s 61 Challenge # 1– Navigating in the dar k 21 Example 1: Middle Head Bunk er 65 Challenge # 2- Composing your sho t 22 Example 2: Malabar Hea dBunker 69 Challenge # 3– Focusing 22 Post Processing 73 Challenge # 4- Calculating your Exposur e 22 RAW conversion 73 Calculating your exposure at nig ht 23 Noise Reduction 73 Noise and Night Photograpyh 23 Creating your composite imag e 74 Estimating Exposure Method # –1 H igh ISO test shot s24 Finishing Up 83 Estimating Night Exposures Method #– 2 P ocket Char 2t 6 Planning Night Shoot s 27 Getting Help 84 Understanding the ambient lig ht 27 Final Words 85 © Brent Pearson 2009 Page 2 © Brent Pearson 2009 Page 3 Introduction Dedication This is the first book I have written and I wasn’t going to bother with a dedication, but I have changed my mind This book is dedicated to my father… the old fossil . My Dad ignited the love of photography in me more than 30 years ago. He patiently taught me the ins and outs of black and white photography. Now I am lucky enough to enjoy my passion wit h my father. We go on shoots together and both enjoy each other’s company as well as our photography. I am very lucky and I appreciate it. © Brent Pearson 2009 Page 4 Foreword from the author First of all, thank you very much for buying this e-book. It represents several years of accumulated knowledge of night photography and light painting. I’m hoping that this e- book will literally save you years of experimentation and trial and error and accelerate your nocturnal learning. More importantly if you haven’t done much night photography, I hope this book excites you enough to get out at night experimenting. It is a lot of fun. I’d like to start this e -book off with a caveat. I’m not an author! I’m a photographer. This is my first e -book and I’m planning to write and produce it without an editor or publisher. At times my grammar might not be correct, however I’m confident that I know my subject and hopefully I’ll do a good job in communicating it to you in a casual and informal manner. Anybody that knows me will attest to the fact that I’m not big on formalities. So I’ll be writing this e-book as if I was talking to you in a social setting. Newport Pool At Night By Brent Pearson Enjoy Brent © Brent Pearson 2009 Page 5 Don’t rip me off… please! I’m putting a lot of intellectual property into this e-book. If you are venturing into the world of night photography and light painting, then this e-book will probably save you about a year of trial and error. I’ve priced this eBook to be affordable for everyone. So please please… don’t forwar d this e-book to your friends. Just send them the link so that they can buy the e -book for themselves. Surely the reward of advancing your night photography and light painting skills by 12 months is worth the price of this e-book. About this e-Book I have tried to lay out the contents of this e-book in a logical manner. It is not designed as a “cookbook” where you can just jump to a particular page. The concepts in this e-book build your knowledge in a logical way. So if you have not done much night photography, you should not skip to the section on light painting as it assumes you have picked up the basics of night photography from the preceding chapters. Cute Pool At Night By Brent Pearson © Brent Pearson 2009 Page 6 As I started to understand the ins -and-outs of night A Logical Progression photography my results started becoming more My photography went through a logical progression. I consistent as opposed to hit-and-miss. After a while I have always been attracted to landscape and seascape found myself starting to experiment with some crude photography. light painting using hand-held torches. While I was highly dissatisfied with my own early light painting As I started taking more and more seascapes, I started tests, I started researching other photographers who enjoying the abstraction that long exposure photography were specializing in light painting and night delivers to a seascape image. All of the detail in the photography and started studying their image s for clues water becomes blurred, clouds full of detail also blur into on their techniques. subtle background canvases… and what you are left with is detail around whatever your point of interest is… I quickly realized that there was not much published whether that is rocks, a jetty, sand, etc. information in one source that would accelerate my learning. There was a lot of information scattered I started enjoying this long exposure photography, and in around about light painting with film and simple light my desire to do more it, I found myself photographing sources, but I couldn’t find anything that really showed earlier and earlier in the morning before sunrise. It me how to approach the subject using modern lights or didn’t take me long to wake up to the fact that I was digital processing techniques. essentially now shooting at night and that if I started going out later rather than getting up earlier I would After studying quite a number of photographers, the one have a lot more time to shoot (and more time to sleep). thing I really learned was that the quality of the light that you use to paint your landscape scenes dramatically I found the step into night photography to be quite impacted the finished result. The only information that I daunting for a number of reasons (see The Challenges of could find referred to either camera flash units or hand - Night Photography on Page 23 for some of the reasons held torches. So in the absence of studying other why). I was in hindsight incredibly lucky on my first people’s learnings, I pretty much had to start doing my night photography outing. The sky was absolutely experimentation with different light sources. perfect for long exposure photography and I ended up It didn’t take me long to become entranced with the with some rather crude but none -the-less exciting images creative possibilities of light painting, and the fact that it that got me hooked straight away. was pretty much unchartered territory. © Brent Pearson 2009 Page 7 The Buzz of Light Painting § It’s experimental – this is not a definitive guide to For me light painting is exciting for a number of reasons; light painting, this e -book just represents my body of knowledge for you to build upon. I hope you can all § It’s a definite photographic niche that really has not build upon my knowledge and together we can been explored. really push this genre of phot ography to a new level. § Light painting offers the photographer a whole new level of control on their images…. It’s a bit like taking the control of studio photogr aphy outdoors. Malabar Bunker # 2 By Brent Pearson © Brent Pearson 2009 Page 8 The Different Types of Lightpainting When you hear photographers talk about light painting, it is important to understand that this term can actually refer to quite different styles of photography in much the same way that night photography can refer to different styles (eg: photographing cityscapes and lights, landscapes taken at night, or photographing star trails). You can classify the term light painting into two quite different categories: Category 1: Using a visible light source to make light trails that are captured by the camera. Category 2: Using a light source that is not visible by the camera to illuminate the scene selectively… painting it with light. Dance By Toby Keller (aka Burnblue) Obviously you can also create images that mix techniques in the same image. This e-book will primarily be focusing on the techniques described in category 2. Illuminating or painting a scene by a light source that is not visible to the camera. © Brent Pearson 2009 Page 9 A Photographer Who Do es Some Beautiful Light Painting While the focus of the eBook is primarily on light painting that does not show visible light sources, you may want to check out some of the photographers who create lovely work that includes the light sources. One of my favorite photographers in this category is Toby Keller (aka Burnblue). Toby is a San Francisco based designer and photographer who has done some gorgeous night photography and light painting. Toby uses both light painting techniques in his work and really does some lovely work combining visible light sources with the environment in the scene. His website can be found at http://www.burnblue.com Fire Tunnel By Toby Keller Light Gathering II, Hendrys By Toby Keller © Brent Pearson 2009 Page 10
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