Night Photography

The other night found me wandering our local park with friends searching for interesting elements to illuminate and photograph. Night photography has always intrigued me because the night removes color and reduces our view to shapes. With the help of strobes and flashlights, color can be reintroduced selectively. This shot was a 2.5 minute exposure at 100 ISO, at f11 with a 16mm lens on a full frame sensor. I used a tripod with a locked cable release, then moved in front of the camera and triggered the flash a few times to light myself. The effect is ghostly! Because of the longer exposure, I was able to capture the ambient light from the streetlights in the park.

Recently I began experimenting with macro photography. I started by setting up a little scene of fun objects from my collection of stuff. As you can see from the picture, some of the objects are only 1/2" or so in size. My challenge was to create a depth of field that made all the objects in focus. I used a Canon 100mm lens that my friend loaned me, with a setup of continuos tungsten lights with 3' umbrellas. My camera was on a tripod, in mirror lock-up with a cable release. I had the f stop set to f22, at .6 seconds. I'm very happy with the results and hope to experiment more in the future. Any ideas or suggestions are much appreciated.

My next post will be about night shooting and light painting.