Staying Alert When Shooting

I went out on a shoot last night. There were a number of shots I have been meaning to take, but the conditions haven't bee favourable. This first one I have been I visioning for months. There's an on-ramp into Stoney Trail (Calgary's ring road) which has runoff basins on either side. They fill with the runoff from the highway, and the rainwater is meant to evaporate, but never seems to.

I like to shoot frames in triplets for HDR purposes. It actually achieves two purposes. The first frame is perfectly exposed. The second is 2/3 of a stop over, and the third is 4/3 of a stop over. This gives me the ability to bring up the dark & shadowy spots. Then after I apply the HDR process, I can always play with the exposure rate to get the mood I am looking for, without losing the details.

The challenge To shooting triplets at night is that you have to remember to be situationally-aware ! I was so concerned with getting the exposure correct, I failed to notice the traffic. The first exposure was about 4 seconds, the second about 6, and during the final 9 second exposure a pickup truck came racing through my shot !

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Project365 - Let's Go For a Drive !

Introduction

I have been thinking about this shoot for a while. I wanted to play with motion, but instead of having the subject crisp & everything else blurry - ala Bokeh - I wanted to capture the feeling of being in motion. After shooting the Auto Strobism shoot, I liked the setup in the car. And this gave me the idea for the shoot !

 

The Setup

This was a lot more of a complex setup than I expected. The idea was to mount the camera (Canon 60D), on the Manfrotto tripod in the back seat of the truck. In order to capture the entire windshield, as well as the occupants of the front seat, I switched to the Canon17-40mm f/4 wide-angle lens, and kept it at 17mm. I was worried about the stability of it all, so I looped the neck strap of the camera over the centre headrest. Finally, in order to get some light in the cabin, we set up the Canon 430EX II flash with my inflatable diffuser.

This photo (taken with my iPhone) shows the camera on the tripod, and the flash mounted in the hotshoe. As you can see, the iPhone camera really sucks in low-light conditions ! With the camera in the back seat, the setup was laborious - pull over, hop in the backseat, make adjustments, test shoot, refocus & start all over again !

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this side shot, you can see the shutter release cable dangling down from the camera body. Unfortunately, the cable is very short, so Pat had to hold her hand back behind her (out of the shot) to take the photos. She was an absolute trooper for staying in that position through 90 minutes and 270 shots !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Photos

Here we are in the driveway. I knew I'd need to have some light inside the cabin, but we spent a few minutes figuring out the placement. At first, I thought off-camera would look good. I really didn't like how this looked at all - very unnatural !

 

 

Here is the first good shot - the cabin of the truck & passengers are reasonably lit, and in-focus. The outside is visible and somewhat blurry. The exposures were taken at 1 second, to enhance the feeling of motion.

This is actually one of my favorites. Most of the outside is blurry - look at the streaky headlights of the oncoming traffic ! But I was keeping pace with the car on our right, so it stayed reasonably in focus. This is the style I was after !

Man down ! Apparently, the rig wasn't as stable as I had hoped. I'm fortunate nothing got damaged as the tripod toppled over...

 

Occasionally, if we paused for too long, the flash would go into battery-saving mode, and not fire on the first shot. So we have about a dozen shots with no interior lighting.

This photo illustrates one of our challenges - how bumpy Calgary's roads are. The streak on the left is an oncoming car. The headlights waver up & down as the truck contends with the uneven road surface. That internal shake ruined quite a few shots entirely.

 

This photo was taken as we drove over the flyover into the downtown core. The exterior is blurred, giving the feeling of motion, while still focused enough to see where we are.

 

 

This is one of my favorite photos captured of the night's shoot. The passing traffic really conveys the feeling of movement. The viewer really feels like they are in the truck with us, driving through the city.

 

 

 

Lessons Learned

This was a complex shoot. I have to give a LOT of credit to my assistant, Pat. She not only fired off the 270 frames, but also had my iPad in her lap (out of sight of the camera) to validate we were getting the shots we wanted. The rigging of the camera in the backseat was OK - we really only toppled over twice in over 90 minutes of shooting. The shutter release cable is WAY too short - I think I am going to investigate a wireless option.

Over all, I am happy with the results. We captured about a dozen really cool photographs, which beautifully convey the feeling of motion. Let me know of you agree ! =D

 

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Project365 - Long Exposures

Introduction

This is my first blog back, since my eye infection. I felt I was taking too long, and didn't want anyone to think I had abandoned the project. I haven't, but I also didn't shoot today. So this entry is based on some of my earlier work.

In this series, I experiment with long exposures. With only one exception, the photographs were shot at a shutter speed of 30 seconds. This allows a LOT of light onto the sensor, which creates some remarkable images. But that also poses challenges, as the photographer must contend with trying to create great images, while only adjusting ISO and aperture. I shot a lot of photos that night, and these will hopefully represent those challenges & some success.
The Setup
I wa shooting my then-new Canon 60D. It had the venerable 24-105mm f/4 L series lens, and because of the length of the exposures, I mounted the camera on my tripod & used my cable-release to trigger the shutter. The shoot was held at Bridgeland Station, on the Calgary LRT line. It has pedestrian bridges that cross over Memorial Drive, as well as an unconstructed view of the downtown core.
The Photos

This is the first photo. It was shot at f/9, ISO 100 and 30 seconds. The lights on the building pop, but the foreground is kind of eerie looking. It also looks a little blurry, but that's what photographers call "noise".

Here is the exact same shot, only at 15 seconds.the image looks less noisy & loses the eerie glow.

Here is the shot I like best. I went back to a 30 second exposure, but dialled back the aperture to f/13. The lights still pop, the buildings are still sharp, and the colours look the most natural to me.

I shot these next two the same night. Due to the fact the shutter was open for 30 seconds, you don't see the cars themselves, but they leave long red streaks where the tail-lights glowed. I also love how the lens filter created remarkable star bursts around the street lights !

Here we are facing the oncoming traffic. The train is more visible, as it stayed in the station for the back half of the shot. But you can still see the lines of the headlights. Gotta admit, I like the effects created by long night exposures.









Lessons Learned
I like night photography. Long exposures allows the sensor to collect a lot of detail, as well as creating cool effects with the lights on the moving cars. Perhaps later this year (when it's a little warmer !), I'll experiment with long-exposure still photography & see how that turns out.
Thanks for sticking around ! There's lots more to come, now that my vision is coming back...