Star light, star bright . . .

by Kim

First star I see tonight,

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Have the wish I wish tonight.

I am always up for a challenge to try something new, to expand my horizons . . . to just play.

In fact I've been wanting to try some nightscapes of downtown Houston, and missed the opportunity awhile back when my photography meetup, met up on a street corner downtown. And while I'm completely okay with going to the sunrise by myself, I'm not as comfortable at night by myself.

In the first image, I set up my tripod, set it to bulb mode, using my wide angle lens and an f-stop of 16. I had planned on light painting with a flashlight and then I had one of those aha moments. Instead of light painting words or squiggly lines, I would try to make star bursts instead. So using my remote, with my camera and tripod on my neighbors sidewalk, I walked back over to my front yard and simply stood in different spots flashing the light on and off. It's the same concept as getting a star burst with the sun during the day, only with a different light source and for a longer period of time.

Next time though, I would turn the lights in the house off and maybe enlist a few more people with flashlights in a few windows. If you look close on the left hand side you can see the red trails of a car that went by during this exposure.

This next image is a bit wobbly. Again using my wide angle, ISO at the lowest setting (100), choosing to start at 5 seconds with an f-stop of 10, I held the camera as still as possible. But that's pretty impossible to do in the car, especially in a smaller car. We were on our way to eat, and were driving our compact car so front seat it was for me. I would like to try this one again, with the tripod, in the back seat of my van (sounds like a game of clue for photographers). My goal was to get fairly straight light trails. I've tried this many times, only I used camera movement for really abstract images. I had a few that had the dashboard in them, but this was the best I could get of the trails. A fairly smooth road at a lower speed seems to work better.

The last image below was my husband driving in a circle in our cul de sac. I was just waiting for someone to call the police to report a crazy drunk guy turning his lights on and off and using his flashers! lol  I think this would have been a better image if either before or after he drove in circles that I used a flashlight for a few seconds to light up the car. This was a 30 second exposure on f16 . I feel it needs a little more interest and will work some more on this one too. I'll try the van next time and maybe even enlist my son to sit in the passenger side with a flashlight?  

So many possibilities, so little time! Go ahead, experiment, get creative. Share them with us and tell us how you did it.

"Night is not something to endure until dawn.

It is an element, like wind or fire. Darkness is its

own kingdom; it moves to its own laws. And

many living things dwell in it."

- Patricia A McKillip

The Music of the Night - (photographically speaking!)

by Carol

"I will love the light for it shows me the way,
yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars."
                                                                     Og Mandino

We spent the month of December celebrating light. But the Christmas and Chanukah lights are now packed away, and we are beginning the long, dark months of winter. The months where the days are short and mostly spent inside, escaping the cold temperatures by tucking in near the fire. 

STOP! This is FOL! We are here to inspire you (and each other)! Get up off the couch and out of your comfort zone and go embrace the darkness! Get those tripods out  - (carrying them around will help work off those Christmas cookies!) and engage your brain! Night photography is not easy. but its so rewarding when it comes out well.

Remember - beauty exists in EVERY moment of EVERY day. You can find in in the midst of darkness as well as in the light. (Are you digging the metaphor here?)

For those of you not used to shooting in the dark (and that's most of us) - here are some basic tips to start off our month:

1.Use a tripod.
  You have very little light to work with, so your shutter must stay open a long time to gather enough  light in. You cannot possibly hold still that long, so a tripod is a must.
2. Shoot in raw.
It will allow you to gather as many pixels as possible so you can accumulate their light.
3. Use manual mode for more control
4. Keep your ISO at 200 to reduce noise, unless the subject is moving.
5. Turn off spot metering - use evaluative (Canon) or matrix (Nikon). This allows the camera to look around for the best light for focusing.
6. With a zoom lens, use it's middle aperture (sweet spot)
Either extreme has less perfection than the central value the lens was based on.
7. Focus on the lit places
 Those are the  places that hold our interest.
8. If you confuse yourself, pop the camera into program mode to see what settings it suggests, then go back to manual and tweak them.
9. Bulb mode let's you press your shutter release to open up the camera, and then press it again when you are ready to stop. here is a link to a handy online chart, if you want to be precise until you are able to feel your way through.

And here are some composition ideas:
1. Play with light sources that are entering the dark from different directions
2. Look for manmade (electric) light against natural light at days end.
3. Shoot at twilight for even greater clarity
4. Convert night photos to black and white for cool effect

I can't wait to view your images in our flickr gallery, in our phone posts and on IG. Post them for us, and then go back to your seat by the fire and stroll through our galleries to see what our FOL family has created.

"We can't live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you."
                                            Libba Bray
                                            A great and Terrible Beauty