Time Exposure

The first time I shot night photos was with my good friend (and great photojournalist),  Chris Stark at Mount Falcon, Colorado. We were taking photos of the comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. We were shooting with film in those 'good ol' days' so we had no idea what our photos would look like. After setting up our tripods, we shot at various intervals of time and shot with 100 asa film so we didn't have any 'grainy' pictures. The lower your ASA the less 'grainy' or less noise (digital photos) you will have in your photo. My first shot was for 10 seconds. It was the best shot I took that night with both tails of the comet clearly visible, the blue color from the second tail and no star trails or overexposure. We played the rest of the night with flash and running all over the mountain. 

Over the years, I have tried to shoot the Northern Lights and other cityscapes. Digital photography has allowed me to get better time exposure photos and learn as I'm shooting. The above photos were shot over New Year's of the Toronto skyline from Ward's Island. 

The first photo is a 10 second exposure with the use of flash. I flashed Michele and then had her stand completely still for the rest of the exposure so she wouldn't be blurred. As you can tell, she isn't as sharp as she could be, because we move a little even though we think we are being completely still. 

Photos from the turn of the century always fascinate me because the people had to sit still for sometimes a half hour for the correct exposure. Most of those people had boards stuck up their backs to keep them from moving. 

The second photo is a 15 to 20 second exposure. You will notice that the sky is whiter than the first photo and this is because the lights expose longer and give off a truer color. The third photo was a 30 second exposure and is a little overexposed because the longer the shutter is open the more light is captured. 

I shot all these on manual exposure with an F-stop at 3.5 to 4.0. 

Most of the time exposure I do now is of water. I love to see that 'cotton candy' look of water in photos. I sometimes use a polarizing filter to help with exposure if the water is in sunlight but most of the time I try to shoot in shadows and expose for no less than a second. I will post examples in the future. 

The only 'rule' for shooting time exposure is to use a tripod or have the camera put on something that isn't moving. Not even an inch. I also use a shutter release or just put the camera on a self timer so my hands are not on the camera when the shutter releases. Even your heartbeat will decrease the sharpness of your photo if you are handholding your camera. A vibration reduction (Nikon) or image stabilization (Canon) lens always helps but use a tripod whenever you can. 

Happy shooting! 

Composition

Sometimes you only have a few minutes to capture a photograph. I always find it difficult to capture beautiful images on film that I see with my eyes. I suppose that's the beauty of photography. When you can bring to life what you've seen, as you've seen it and have it evoke a special emotion in people, you know you have a good shot. When I was walking by this park, I loved seeing the outstretched shadows of the trees in the snow, the sun setting in between the trees and the way the trees were placed in the park. Knowing that I needed a high shutter speed to make the trees silhouetted, my main concern was composition. I shot five frames of this in different perspectives. I like the second photo because of the shadows stretched across the snow. But I cropped off the top of the trees. I don't have enough of the tops of the trees to make this a great photo. The top photo I also cropped the tops of the trees but not as much. You can also see some of the shadows in the snow but this photo is more about the silhouettes rather than the shadows. 

I always tell myself to look around in the viewfinder before shooting. Just so you can see if what you are shooting is what you want. While you may only have a minute to shoot the scene, there is always time to take a second to look around to set up your shot so when you see the final product you aren't disappointed with a branch coming out of the corner of the frame. This also applies when you are photographing people. So, set up your exposure, look in the viewfinder, set your composition, take a second to look to see if you have too much headroom in people shots, make sure they don't have anything coming out of their head, make sure you have the tops of trees in the frame, take a breath and shoot.