Night Moves – Correct Exposure for Night Photography

Squid fishermen on Les Davis Pier - 4 minutes at f/8

“Workin’ on mysteries without any clues, Workin’ on our night moves” -Bob Seger, Night Moves

Last Tuesday, I spent a few hours working on some night photography down on the Ruston Way waterfront with a small group from the Mountaineers. We got quite a few questions about what we were doing down there with cameras and tripods at night. I guess we should have told them we were working on our night moves. But unlike the Bob Seger song, we were working in winter instead of summer. Winter is a great time for night photography because the night comes early, and you can still get home at a decent hour. Of course, it has disadvantages too, like the weather. Though not extremely cold, only about 40° F (about 4° C), it does get chilly standing around waiting on those long exposures.

Fireboat - 25 seconds at f/8

I’m really starting to enjoy doing night photography. The camera picks up lots of color and detail that the eye cannot see. I recently read Night Photography, Finding Your Way in the Dark by Lance Keimig, and I have a long way to go before ever approaching his abilities. But I have fun. I highly  recommend Keimig’s book to anyone wanting to learn more about night photography, it has lots of good information.

One of the great mysteries of night photography is getting the correct exposure without excessive noise. Digital noise is the bane of many a night photographer. Noise increases with long exposures, high ISOs, and underexposed shots. That’s why, with night photography, you should still use low ISOs and exposure for the right side of the histogram (while not allowing any important highlight to be blown out). Shooting this way, will help minimize noise, but will lead to long (or very long) exposure times, very often over 30 seconds (the longest programmed shutter speed on most cameras). Therefore, to get the correct exposure, you will often be shooting in manual mode with the shutter speed set to bulb. Knowing how long to leave the shutter open is a difficult question. It’s a real pain to wait through a 2-minute exposure only to discover when looking at the results that it should have been a 4- or 8-minute exposure.

Here’s one tip I found very useful from Keimig’s book. Set the camera to a very high ISO and take a test shot first. This can be used to check both composition (it’s sometimes hard to compose through the viewfinder in the dark) and exposure. To make the exposure math easy, Keimig presents a chart in his book and on his Nightskye website. Basically, for cameras with a native ISO of 100 (Canon cameras for example), set the ISO to 6,400 and take one or more test shots to find the correct exposure. The number of seconds in the correct exposure at ISO 6,400, is the number of minutes for the correct exposure at ISO 100. For cameras with a native ISO of 200 (like most Nikons), the test shot  ISO should be set to 12,800 and the normal shot  ISO at 200. (If your camera doesn’t have such high settings, his chart shows how to compensate).  For example, I use a Canon camera. So for the featured photo above, I took a test shot at ISO 6,400 and found the correct exposure was 4 seconds. I switched the camera to ISO 100 and re-shot with an exposure of 4 minutes (in both cases, of course, using the same aperture, f/8 in this case). Much easier than guessing on the correct exposure.

Thanks to Lance Keimig, I’ve solved one the mysteries of my night moves!

Les Davis Pier - HDR image, 4 exposures at 2, 8, 30, and 120 seconds at f/8

Fireboat detail - 2.5 minutes at f/8

Les Davis Pier - 32 seconds at f/8

Light Swarm - waving a LED flash light on the pier (as you can see, my technique needs improving) - 1 minute at f/8

Gray Day at Grayland

Bad weather can often make for good photographs, or so I’ve often read. However, sometimes bad weather is just bad. Such was the case last Wednesday. I scheduled the day off from my day job to do some photography. Wednesday morning didn’t look too bad when I got up, but by the time Tanya and I had the dog and cameras packed up in the car it was raining. Remembering that bad weather sometimes makes for good photography, I wasn’t too worried about coming home skunked.

We drove south and west to go the beach at Westport and Grayland. Though the sun started peeking through the clouds early in the drive, by the time we reached Aberdeen, there was a constant mist falling and the sky was a blank, gray sheet. We stopped at the Johns River Wildlife Area to let the dog out. Luckily, the mist had stopped falling, and I was able to take a few photos. After an hour or so, we continued on to Westport. We drove down to the marina, and the mist started up again, now accompanied by wind. I walked a bit on the docks, but took few pictures – it was pretty miserable out.

We then drove over to the beach by the jetty, and the mist let up again. However, the sky was still a blank slate and the wind was strong. We walked on the beach some, and I took a few more photos. Normally in situations like this, where the sky is so lifeless in photos, I try to concentrate more on taking detail shots – like of beach rocks, patterns in the sand, etc. However, the wind was causing me problems, shaking the tripod. And the clouds were so thick, it was dark, requiring long shutter speeds.

Later we drove down to Tokeland and then back up to Grayland for another walk on the beach, this time back in the mist.  We ended the day having a picnic dinner, with a bottle of red from the Westport Winery, in the car facing the waves of the Pacific. There was no sunset, just a slow fading of what little light there was.

Overall, it was a great day. How can being on the beach with wife and dog not be? Just not a good day for photography.

Wet field at Johns River Wildlife Area

On the docks at Westport

Beach detail at Westhaven State Park, Westport

Bare, lichen covered trees at Johns River

Looks like they remembered the sign but forgot the road!

5 Years Ago – Bear Necessities

I had hoped to offer some new images this week. I took Monday off from my day job to go do some photography. But instead, I ended up cutting a hole in my bathroom ceiling to evict a pregnant squirrel from my attic. The squirrel is gone, the hole remains, and still have no new images to show (and yes, I do feel bad for the squirrel, I hope she found a new home). So once again I reach into the archives.

Five years ago this month, my family took a trip to the Northwest Trek Wildlife Park just south of Tacoma. It was a family outing to show our Chinese exchange student some of the native wildlife of the Pacific Northwest, so I didn’t do a lot of photography, but of course I took the camera along.

I spent a about 15 minutes with a grizzly. Most of the time, it appeared to be asleep, but it did stir for a couple of minutes, which is when I took this series of pictures. I probably would have spent more time there, but the family beckoned.

Northwest Trek is a great place to take some wildlife images. They have a tram ride through a free-roaming area (which the bears are not part of) that can lead to some great images. Occasionally they have special photographer trips on the trams, which occur earlier in the morning and make more stops. Groups of photographers can even arrange for these special tours. I went on one back in my film days with the Pacific Northwest Nature Photographers and would like to go again some day.

When out at Northwest Trek or wherever your photographic adventures might take you,  remember it sometimes helps to keep thing simple and look for the bare necessities in your compositions!

“Look for the bare necessities, The simple bare necessities, Forget about your worries and your strife”  – from the Bare Necessities by Terry Gilkyson from the Disney film The Jungle Book

Santa Fe Revisited

As many of you know, I completed a trip to Utah and New Mexico last autumn. One of the highlights of the trip was the several days Tanya and I spend in Santa Fe. I enjoyed my trip to Santa Fe so much, I’ve written an article about travel photography in and around Santa Fe for the Travel Photographers Network.  They published the article this week, featuring my photo shown here as on their home page (you may recognize this photo, which I posted in black and white in a previous post). You can read the article here. While several images are embedded in the story, there is an associated album which includes 30 images from the Santa Fe region. While you are at the TPN site looking at my article, be sure to check out the other articles and photos on the site; it is a wonderful resource and community for travel photographers of all experience levels.

Snowbound

I admit feeling a little embarrassed, being snowbound at home by only 8 inches (20 centimeters) of snow when I’m an eastern Washington native who learned to drive on snow and ice. Earlier this week, western Washington experienced a winter storm that brought havoc to the Puget Sound region. On Wednesday, snow fell; Thursday brought freezing rain, coating everything with ice. I stayed home and telecommuted to my day job. Can you blame me for not wanting to put tire chains on the car when work was as close as my studio computer? (Does this mean I’m getting lazy or wise in my old age?)

I accomplished a lot without the distractions of the office. However, being home brings its own distractions, not the least of them being the snow and ice in the yard. So I couldn’t help but slip out in the yard to do a bit of photography, especially after the freezing rain ended. Outside, the coating of ice seemed to make everything old new again in our yard. I was amazed how bit of snow and freezing rain changed everything and made my creative imagination flow. I wish I had more time to do photography, but by the time I got enough work done to justify picking up the camera, it was already late in the afternoon and the light was fading.

The experience did remind me once again how a change, sometimes a small change, can provide inspiration. Sometimes, the change need not be more than a change of attitude. If you’re having trouble getting the creative juices to flow, or have a case of photographer’s block, grab your camera and make the old new again. If you’re lucky, you might have an ice storm available to help.

PS – a big thanks to Tanya for braving the cold to hold a piece of black mat board for backgrounds on some of these shots!

On the porch, near the bird feeder.

Our camellia, just about ready to bloom, crashed to the ground later in the night from its ice load.

Some old wire mesh I've be meaning to throw away - glad I haven't yet!

I'm not sure which plant this is, but it looks nice with ice

Guess I'm attracted to footprints, here's mine and Carson's (our Newfoundland)