14.05.2012

TAOP

Part Four: Light.

Project: Artificial Lighting

Exercise: Night Photography.

Equipment: Olympus E3.

Sky scrapers in Deal.  There’s a concept.  

The shots I have taken for this exercise represent the night scenes in the area.

The first is of the Deal taken from The Pier.  It was taken, as was suggested, just before full night so that some texture was left in the sky.  To render the colour of the town and The Pier with something approaching reality I had to let the sky and the sea drift off to a dark blue. This is partly tempered by the reflection of the town in the sea.   I played with various camera positions, increasing and decreasing the amount of pier and taking the image with different horizon heights.  This is the one I liked best, with a busy lower half balanced by the dark and deep expanse of sky.  The picture is based on two strong triangles.  The first is formed by the left side of the frame, the line of illuminated buildings, and the pier itself.  The second is the raised part of the pier which disappears at a vanishing point at the landward end.  There is an implied triangle formed by the pier and the row of lights.  The position of the nearest light stops the eye from being constantly led to the landward end of the pier and allows the viewer to look elsewhere.  

2.5sec @ f8.  

The second is my bridge over road shot and was the culmination of 30 minutes of shooting.  The whole of east Kent must go to bed at sundown as this was the busiest of the shots.   I closed the lens down to its minimum of f22 to extend the time and have the best depth of field.  Tripod mounted, the camera was allowed to look after the exposure.  The only change I have made is to the colour balance which I did in Photoshop by changing the colour temperature and playing the the tint slider.

50secs @ f22.

The third is an evening shoot of a large pond lit from the side by sodium lights.  The difficulty was to allow enough natural light to illuminate the scene without having the sodium lamps drown it out with their orange glow.  I tried playing with the exposure settings  to see the effect but settled for this one.  Any darker and detail disappeared, any lighter and it looked like washed out daylight rather than evening.  The sky was a little pale and bland so I allowed the low branches of a tree to fill the space.  the water was mirror flat so the reflection of the trees at the far end work rather well.  I left the lamps way out on the left as they became more dominant as I let them further into the shot.  I used them merely as an indication as to how dark it really was.  As with the image above I tweaked the colour by using the colour temperature and tint sliders.

1/2sec @ f4.5.  Jammed against a tree for steadiness.

The last is a night shot of Dover Castle.  The castle is lit by strong orange lights that I have managed to correct with the same technique as before, namely by playing with the colour temperature and tint.  The power of the Castle is well demonstrated sitting as it does above the town and guarding all approaches.  

1sec @ f4.