Sunday, January 10th, 2010
Plaza de la Paz, Guanajuato
Normally I get a little bummed when I get up early for photo shoot to find it raining. But on our second day in Guanajuato I was perfectly happy with the light drizzle. Night cityscape photography is just about the only time I like to shoot in the rain. The mix of colorfully painted buildings and well lit callejones (alleys) in Guanajuato make night photography here particularly beautiful anyway. But one thing that can enhance that beauty is if the cobbles are wet, causing them to shimmer, reflecting the color and light.
Calle Tecalote in the Rain
It wasn’t raining hard, but I still got thoroughly soaked as I wandered around the streets in the dark. Keeping the camera lens dry was also a challenge, especially for the 20-30 second exposures that were required while using a circular polarizer and an aperture of f/16 in low light. In the northwest US, rain is common enough that there are usually awnings or covered entries to hide under when shooting cityscapes in the rain. Not only are awnings rare in this arid part of the world, but most buildings don’t even have any sort of eaves to hide under. I was only able to take a few images before my gear and I were wet enough to call it a morning. Still, I’m excited about the images I did get and hope to have another chance to photograph in the rain while I’m here. On the other hand, I might give up that chance if it meant I could get some warm, sunny weather. I’m layered up and freezing at the moment since the houses don’t have insulation, double pane windows or weather stripping.
Guanajuato Streets in the Rain
Tags: Guanajuato, long exposure, Mexico, night photography, travel photography
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Monday, October 6th, 2008
In situations involving low levels of light it can often be beneficial to obtain a longer exposure to allow the sensor/film more time to absorb color and glow. There can be a lot of color and light bouncing off clouds and hills that our eyes can’t pick up. Cameras are able to “see” into low light scenes by leaving the shutter open and collecting more light. If I really want to pull as much light and color from a scene as possible I’ll often use a neutral density filter (ND) along with my usual filter stack (polarizer and graduated neutral density when needed) and also set the ISO on my camera down to 50 in order to extend what was already going to be a long shutter speed.
A neutral density filter is a neutral gray piece of glass or plastic that is placed in front of the lens. Since it is neutral it doesn’t change the color of the image or do any other special effects. All it does is reduce the amount of light that can pass through the lens to the image sensor or film (kind of like wearing color neutral sunglasses). By reducing the amount of light coming in, the exposure time needs to be longer to get a properly exposed image. One effect of longer exposure times is the blurring of anything moving within the image (water, clouds, wind blown trees, etc.). Another affect is that if there is low level colored light washing over the scene it will saturate in the image over time. I use Singh-Ray neutral density filters because they are some of the most color neutral filters available and give excellent results. I also use Singh-Ray Graduated Neutral Density (GND) filters. GND filters are neutral gray at the top and fade to clear near the middle. They are used to hold back the light in one part of an image (like a bright sky) in order to balance the light across the scene.
The two photos above were taken one right after the other, the first at 6 sec @ f/20, ISO 100 with a 3 stop GND for the sky. The second was taken at 30 sec @ f/20, ISO 50 with a 3 stop GND and a 3 stop ND. Quite a difference 24 seconds of shutter time can make.
Tags: digital photography, exposure, filters, graduated neutral density, help, light, long exposure, neutral density filters, photography, pointers, saturation, singh-ray filters, techniques, tip, tips, tutorial
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