Gallery Pick of the Week
Instead of just showing pretty pictures only, here we have space for contributors to discuss their images every week.
This is a great opportunity to get some insight from the original photographer and the content is entirely open. It could be anything from the personal feeling of the photographer about the image to any photographic techniques or location knowledge he/she would like to share with our visitors.
Gallery Pick of the Week > January 2011
 |
The Seduction of Night Sky, 28/1/11, Pele Leung When nightfall comes most photographers wrap up their day and prepare to enjoy dinner shortly afterwards but you have your own mission to achieve. You are well prepared and have already taken your meal. |
|---|
Pele Leung - The Seduction of Night Sky, 28/1/11
Cape Schanck. A star trail photo digitally created from multiple 2-minute exposed shots.
When nightfall comes most photographers wrap up their day and prepare to enjoy dinner shortly afterwards but you have your own mission to achieve. You are well prepared and have already taken your meal. Photographic opportunities are still everywhere even after twilight but most photographers do not know what can be achieved. Perhaps some may know about night photography but a long day in the field has already consumed all their energy. You are different - energetic, passionate and well-prepared.
There are a lot of setup work before shooting in the dark. You are ambitious because you know what total commitment means to you. You carry multiple sets of camera equipment for shooting various kinds of night photography. The traditional star trail photography is your primary shooting goal but you also prepare to do time lapse photography as well. In fact, you know that both star trail and time lapse photography can be achieved with a single set of equipment. Therefore, after preparing your photo composition, you set your wide-angle lens to manual focus with the focus pointing to infinity. Then you open your lens to the widest aperture with the highest but acceptable ISO of your camera to fit the exposure within 30 seconds. 30-second is not an arbitrary choice because you know 30-second would be the slowest shutter speed of your lens to freeze the stars.
Why do you need to freeze the stars? This is a question from your fellowed photographers. Your answer is simple - this is what time lapse photography about - stars moving in the time lapse movie like single stars but not star streaks. Once all set, you leave the rest for your remote camera timer - taking a shot for every 30-second with a 3-second interval to allow each image to be recorded to the memory card before taking the next shot.
A star trail photo digitally created from multiple 30-second exposed shots initially prepared for time lapse movie.
What is next? What would you do with another set of camera equipment you brought with you? After a brief consideration, you may decide to take a few shots which could be blended in together for a master piece. How does this work? Of course, you know this by heart. First of all, let's find a photo composition with nice foreground, matching distant background and also plenty of sky. The idea is to take three shots with different exposure settings but using the same composition.
According to your previous experiences, you know that a stable tripod is vital to keep the composition of all three shots the same. Once the tripod is secure and the composition has been set, you take the first shot with small aperture so that all subjects are in sharp focus. Then you wait until the twilight arrives. When most of the sky has darkened you take another shot to capture the remained colours near the horizon. To shorten the exposure, you dial in to larger aperture and a higher ISO value. Of course, you have been very careful of the camera position and keep the composition exactly the same as your first shot.
Now you have to wait until the twilight is over and the stars begin to appear. The wait seems to last forever and it is the right time to check whether the first camera is doing the job as you planned. Everything seems to be fine. Good.
Finally the sky turns into a wonderful scene you had seen in a planetarium before. To freeze the stars, you know you have to do the same trick as your first set of camera equipment - exposure within 30 seconds. Now all three shots have been taken with different exposures and focuses and you just cannot wait to see the end result after combining them into a single image in Photoshop. You know that the post processing bit is as hard as the image capturing operation you have just done. But you know your post processing experiences and skills will ensure your success.
A photo digitally created with two shots, one with freezed stars and one with brighter foreground.
Now it is about midnight and the operation of your first set of camera equipment has come to an end. After a few good hours of exposure, the external battery is flat but you have hundreds of images recorded on the memory card. It is time to wrap up for today. Don't forget you will have to prepare for the sunrise shots! Excellent. You have just demonstrated what total commitment really means. Now you are the model of all other photographers!