Night time photography - 28th November 2013 Lyle Hill, Greenock, Scotland
Tonight I decided to practice my night time photography. Living next to the Firth of Clyde, and with it being a still night weather-wise, I thought there may be a few opportunities to catch reflections from Gourock in the water.
The reflections were not great, being only from the tungsten road lights. I then decided to try Inverkip Marina, but this was very dark.
The last throw of the dice was Lyle Hill in Greenock, where there is a fantastic high view over Cardwell Bay in Gourock.
Results were mixed, mainly due to the slight wind since I was so high up, which seemed to have led to slight camera shake, even though the shots were taken using timed shutter release, and the camera was on a tripod.
Of the shots I took, the most successful seemed to be this one:
This was using the following settings:
Manual mode
Aperture: f/11
Shutter speed 13seconds
Nikon D7100 Nikkor AF-S 18-105mm @ 34mm
Firstly, I used aperture priority which gave a shutter speed of 15 seconds. I felt however that this was slightly too long, and the lights on the pier were slightly over exposed.
I changed the camera to manual mode, and brought the shutter speed down to 13 seconds, which meant exposing 2/3 step down, which seemed to make for a better exposure all round.
As a first attempt at night photography, I'm pleased with this. If it had been less cold and windy, then I may have spent more time on it, and perhaps got a sharper shot. Next time!
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In my introduction into the world of blogging, I will firstly explain my introduction to photography.
As a full time computer programmer, photography was far from my mind, and other than holiday snaps, never presented itself as something that would become a passion.
As far as I remember, it was around the summer of 2007, on a visit to Adrspach in the Czech Republic, when I decided to experiment with my compact camera (a Fujifilm I think). Adrspach is an area of spectacular rock formations, with many pathways between them. Within one of these formations was a waterfall, and I remembered seeing a photo in a magazine of a waterfall that had been shot to blur the movement of the water. I thought I would give this a go with my compact camera, but couldn't really control the settings to do this. All I knew at the time was to obviously try to keep the shutter open for longer than the standard auto shot. I set the camera to firework setting, took the shot and 'bam!', I got the shot I was hoping for. Although not as sharp as I would like, it was the best I could have hoped for from a 3MP compact camera. That was the moment I was hooked on photography.
From then, I realised that there was so much more to photography than point and click, and with the digital age, the possibilities were probably more accessible to a newbie latecomer, although not forgetting that fundamentals are fundamental! But having knowledge of the fundamentals is what makes it FUN!
So, what are these fundamentals you may ask?
Well, I will attempt to cover the following in my blog
Aperture
Shutter speed
ISO
Using the above to control and manipulate exposure
Focus
The rules of composition (and how rules are there to be broken)
Light (the photographer's nemesis)
Editing using photoshop
...and any other fun things I come across as I also expand my knowledge,
to help those that have become interested in photograpy, and would like a laymans guide to help them improve in their new found hobby.
