4/6 and a primer on night photography.

I can't wait every night until midnight to post on the right date, so expect the new posts at night the day before. Well, not really the day before anymore. It's more like me putting two on the same day, then staying on schedule. Anyways. This way I can sleep at night. Which I tend to like.

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Photography is basically capturing light, in it's basic form, reflected on objects, or lack thereof. It's instinctive to go shoot during the day, when the light is readily available. But weird things happen at night, and it has nothing to do with M. Jackson's Thriller video.

First of all, the only available light at night comes from different sources. Flash, street lights, cars passing by, etc. Any common light source becomes significant, compared to it's irrelevance when overpowered by the sun. (Think of a flashlight at midday.) This leaves allot of room for experimentation.

On the other side, the light is not plentiful. In fact, in terms of photography, it's practically non existent. Even at wide apertures, cameras cannot capture anything at decent shutter speeds to allow for handheld photography. Enters the tripod.

The problem with handholding in low light is that we are not robots. We shake, we sway, we breathe. More so when the only thing keeping us up is high levels of caffeine. Tripods fix that.

Locking down a camera for a long exposure and aiming it as a dimly lit stationary object will let enough light in to make it as bright as you wish.

It is to be noted that the long exposure will saturate the colors allot more than an ordinary 1/60th of a second exposure. I took advantage of that to produce yesterday's picture. On point and shoot cameras, though, be prepared to have "hot pixels". When solicited for long times, some pixels in the sensor oversaturate to the point of becoming solid colors. Red, green and blue dots can appear in your final pictures. but let's not let that ruin the experience. Nothing a little Photoshop/Gimp/[insert your photo app] can't fix!

All the pictures in this set were taken using a sturdy tripod and long exposures.

Enough for tonight. Tomorrow, we'll discuss variations and experimentation with the technique, such as including movement and strobing while the shutter is open.

Info[18-55@38mm|ISO200|30s@f14|Available light]
PS Sorry for posting a very similar picture to that of Tuesday. I treated them differently in post, with a different white balance. But bare with me, the two next ones are quite different.