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Week 8: Night Time

Submit Assignment
  • Due Mar 6 by 11:59pm
    •  
  • Points 30
    •  
  • Submitting a text entry box or a file upload

Task

Each week, take photos fitting the theme and upload your 3 favorites AND their edits in Lightroom. This week's theme: Night photography. 

Purpose

Night photography brings out some unique challenges. For one thing, it's the ultimate test of your muscle memory! Like a soldier assembling his gun blindfolded, you don't have the luxury of seeing all those camera buttons at night. A good photographer can modify their settings with ease even in pitch darkness. 
Second, the total lack of light means uniquely compensating for that with your exposure. If you have a subject (like a person) You might expose them with a flash, followed by a full minute of exposure to get the starry night behind them. 

Criteria for Success

Your edited and unedited photos will demonstrate 1 or more techniques for night photography, such as:
  • Bokeh shots
  • Bulb/long exposure star streaks
  • Flash to combine a night subject with a city skyline 
  • Light painting

Rubric

30 points. 5 points each for 3 unedited and 3 Lightroom-edited photos 

Knowledge & Skillz

Tripod
You'll probably be exposing for a second or longer, and maybe as long as 15 minutes! Use a tripod, or at least a flat surface your camera rests on. 
ISO
You might be tempted to use a high ISO. But then your photos will be NOISY! It's better to design around night's limitations. Expose longer and use a tripod to get purty backgrounds, rather than ISO compensation
Bulb exposure
If you turn your shutter speed all the way left, past 30", you get a setting called BULB. Some cameras instead have that as a separate mode. Bulb exposure will expose for as long as you hold the shutter button down! So for night photos, try shooting with 100 ISO (very dark but no noise), F22 (very dark but sharp long depth of field) and Bulb exposure (WAY WAY LIGHT! Because you can hold the shutter down for 3 minutes.) To avoid camera shake while holding that button for 3 whole minutes, consider using an external flash or DSLR controller. 
Bokehs
If you ever wondered why people spend for a low aperture lens (f1.4, f1.8, f2.8) Bokehs are the effect of too much light vs dark with shallow depth of field. They're beautiful! Try shooting car headlights, christmas trees, neon industrial waste, with your aperture set  LOW to get cool bokehs. You can even use a paper cutout to to make shaped bokehs! 
Stars
The best way to capture stars is with a nice crisp deep depth of field, AKA F22. This might sound crazy to go that dark, but it's a necessary evil. 

Changing camera settings
It's ROUGH changing your settings at night when you can't see the buttons. Night photography is where you learn your muscle memory! But maybe use a flashlight to adjust settings when you can't see them. 
Looking at Photos
If you make mistakes, it's difficult to chimp them with a tiny LCD at night, or setting your zoom/focus Try remote shooting via tethered laptop and Lightroom, or viewing your photos right after you shoot them on a laptop.

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