Category Archives: techniques

White on White

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The temperature here in the Arctic Circle north of Svalbard has finally reached 37 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) and the ice hasn’t melted, leaving seals easy prey for hungry Polar Bears. We were fortunate to see eight, healthy bears this day and to get close enough to photograph them. But how do you shoot (with a camera) a white bear against white ice and get a decent exposure?

In the first and last photos there is enough color in the water to average out the camera’s meter reading. Camera meters need to see tone in a standard way – they try to read everything as a neutral gray. In a colorful scene with a large tonal range the meter is able to produce a good, accurate exposure.

The middle photo is a more complicated story. The image is all white except for the shadow and the bear’s nose. The camera meter really wants to make this photo a nice gray, which would make our white Polar Bear angry and you don’t want to piss off a Polar Bear. So for this situation I set the exposure compensation to plus 2/3 s, which overexposes the image enough to give me a nice white scene and still hold the detail.

In the tragic situation of photographing a starving Polar Bear on land, the meter should do okay with the white and brown tones in the scene. If global warming continues and the Polar Bear’s hunting grounds – ocean ice where it finds seals – freeze later in the fall and then melt earlier in the spring, then we will have more to be concerned about than the correct exposure.

Fourth of July in New York

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Fireworks in NYC. Panasonic GH2, 14-140mm lens at 17mm. ISO 160 f/13 at 45 seconds.

Here is my image from last night’s Macy’s fireworks’ display. I positioned myself on the sundeck at my gym, Chelsea Piers and shot north and west up the Hudson River. This fireworks display was incredible and very bright. I stopped down to f/14 and left the shutter open a little longer between the bursts so the adjacent pier would show detail. For this image the shutter was open for 45 seconds using the black card technique I described in my previous blog.. I included the pier because it gives the fireworks size perspective and a sense of location.

Photographing Fireworks

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A fireworks exhibition in Las Vegas

Fireworks’ displays are the highlight of many celebrations in the United States. Cities feature these amazing light shows on New Year’s Eve, centennial events, and most notably, the 4th of July. Their various patterns and colors against the night background can produce stunning visual photographs – images that you can capture by following these easy steps:

Use a tripod and shutter release to keep the camera steady.
Set the ISO at 100-400 and the exposure on manual. (F/8 -11 is a good starting point at ISO 100).
Turn off the auto focus to prevent your lens from searching for a focus point in the black sky, and manually focus at infinity.
Turn off the lens stabilization; it doesn’t work well on a tripod.
Don’t use a wide lens or the bursts will appear very small in your frame.
Watch your framing, the fireworks usually explode higher than you think. It’s also nice to include buildings or vistas in the shot for scale and depth.

And now the big secret: lock your shutter open and hold a black card in front of your lens. When you see a good burst of color, remove the black card for a couple of seconds, then hold the black card over your lens again. Remove the card when you see another burst. Repeat this process of removing the card and releasing the shutter until you feel you have gotten a good set of bursts on that one frame. Usually three to five bursts per frame are enough.

Since fireworks are set off in very quick bursts, your shutter only needs to be open from 20-60 seconds to capture them. You can avoid delays in shooting your next frame by turning off the camera’s long exposure noise reduction. (See my previous blog on night photography to learn more about noise reduction) It is important to shoot as much as you can at the beginning of the fireworks’ display. As the show goes on, smoke builds up from the explosions, which gives the sky a hazy look.

Enjoy the spectacle and have a safe celebration.

Working at Night

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Panasonic GH2 7-14mm lens at 9mm. ISO 160, 6 seconds f/10

The "Hole"

When the sun goes down don’t put your cameras away, instead grab your tripod and enter a new world of imagery. I’ve been doing ‘night’ shots for many years and the key to making great night photos is simple – don’t wait until it’s totally dark, unless you are planning on photographing stars. If you are shooting landscapes or city scapes, a black sky will not work. Immediately after sunset, a diligent photographer can take advantage of the ten minute window when the sky has a warm glow and there’s still enough light to help illuminate your landscape. You can find color in the sky after sunset; the secret is knowing where to look.
The eastern sky turns cobalt blue while the western sky, where the sun sets will acquire nice pink and blue tones. Of course much of the color is dependent upon atmospheric factors: cloud cover, smog, dust, water particles in the air and the time of year.

When shooting a cityscape with buildings, the lights in the windows add even more depth to your final photo. The best time of year for these shots is in the winter when the sun sets before five or six o’clock and everyone is still at work. In the summer, city scapes can be problematic because the sun sets between seven to ten pm (depending on how far north you are),and because most workers are out of their buildings, the office lights are turned off.

It is best to use a tripod when shooting at night, even though you can set your digital camera to ISO 6400 and hand hold it with a fast lens. With a tripod you can stay at a low ISO and get a good quality file. The higher ISO will give you a lot of noise and that noise will be accentuated in the shadow areas in your image.

Here are some quick tips for night shooting:
• Use a sturdy tripod; a small tripod extended to the max is not stable.
• Use a cable release so the camera doesn’t move when you press the shutter. If you don’t have a cable release, trip the shutter using the self timer.
• Use a low ISO.
• Pick the sharpest lens aperture; it’s usually two to three stops down from wide open.
• Be careful that your camera meter does not take its reading directly off of a highlight or shadow.
• Although you will usually be set at infinity, be aware of where the camera is focusing.
• If the meter reading and the focus are a problem, take the camera off automatic. Use manual focus and manual exposure.
• Lock up your camera’s mirror. The motion of the mirror going up and down can cause camera shake.
• Finally, turn on the camera’s long exposure noise reduction.
There is debate among photographers as to how efficient this is. Some like to use the noise control in Photoshop. My opinion is that the camera does a better job. The downside is that after you take your photo, the camera does another ‘dark frame’ for the same amount of time as your original exposure, which results in a delay before you can take the next picture. The delay is caused by signal to noise ratios and the size of sensor sites; much too technical for the purposes of this blog. (If you want to learn more about it you can do a search.)

Technical aspects aside, shooting at night requires common sense. Get to the location early so you can scout it out and find a good position. Bring a flashlight; by the time you are done it’s going to be dark. Even better than a flashlight, wear a head lantern which frees up your hands. I recall an assignment in Utah when I went out on my own to do a night landscape. The area was quite remote and I had to carry all of my equipment down a steep and slippery path in the dark. There was no cell phone service and had I tripped or fallen and injured myself, I would have been in a lot of trouble. The lesson: don’t go out alone.

For this photo of ground zero in New York City looking west, I got to my location very early. I was shooting from a building under construction and I had to wear boots, a hardhat and an orange vest. I also had an escort with me from the building developer. Our first obstacle was that the construction elevator wasn’t running because it was the end of the day for the construction workers. We had to walk up ten flights of steps with my equipment to get to the right position. The second and almost deal killing obstacle was that in New York as in most cities, safety regulations require that buildings under construction be wrapped in netting to prevent construction material from flying below. This netting was so fine that I couldn’t place my lens through it. I thought my photo was not going to happen until I noticed that various sections of the netting were fastened together with locking cable ties. When I asked my escort if I could cut open a few of these ties, he was skeptical. Finally, he granted me permission on the condition that I close the netting with cable ties when I finished shooting. If I was going to take this picture, I needed to find cable ties; an item that I have plenty of in my studio but none in my camera bag, here on the tenth floor. Having come this far and high up, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. I canvassed the construction bins around the various floors of the site, like a homeless person sifting through garbage cans. Ultimately I got lucky and found a box of cable ties. The photo was going to happen.

The sun went down that evening around 8:22PM. But since I was shooting west into the sunset, balancing the bright sky with the unlit, memorial fountain and barely lit trees wasn’t possible. The sky was darker by 8:40PM but the exposure for the dark shadows in the trees was going to render the sky too bright. Although it would have been easier looking into the darker, eastern sky that angle and direction wouldn’t give me the composition I was going for. It wasn’t until 9:00PM that the light came together and I was able to start taking the pictures I wanted. Working in the dark can be an enlightening experience.