Today's Guest Blogger: Matt Hill on Night Photography

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Photograph © Matt Hill

Today's awesome guest blogger is Matt Hill. 


Take it away Matt.


Thanks so much for offering to do a writeup, Rick! I'd like to share some tips on night photography and tell your blog readers about a unique experience.

I often get asked during workshops how I choose a lighting scheme for night photography. Here's a loose guide to my digital lighting process.

1) Always shoot your first exposure for available light with no extra light sources. Use the High ISO Test that I first heard about through Gabe and Lance Keimig to find a suitable exposure fast. Make one exposure at your optimum ISO.

2) Study the result and look for opportunities to tell a story. Since you are dilating time, you have a chance to tell a story with light during those seconds or minutes. What areas need more detail? Is the moonlight bright enough? Want to overpower it and make the main light source come from someplace else? I look for opportunities to make the most important feature of the photograph stand out and start working on illuminating this.

3) NEVER light from behind the camera. The flattest and ugliest light comes from you standing behind your camera. Stand far left or right and get low or high to create shadows with your flashlight or flash.

4) Get creative. Put light sources behind objects. Cast shadows towards your lens. Try pointing a light source into your lens to see how the flare looks (can be awesome when done right).

5) Create a sense of time passing. Things that help promote this include star trails (start at 30 second exposures and can go into hours), light writing, soft water, moving trees/bushes in wind (all are in above photograph) and moving clouds.

In the end, the most successful night photographs make the viewer think about how they are looking at compressed time in a frozen moment. Use light to bring out details that tell your story in a single frame. 

Speaking of which, if you want to join Gabriel Biderman and me as we lead you on a night photography tour of one of the oldest and most inspiring locations in all of NY – Bannerman Castle (image above), read on. This turn of the century castle rests upon the small, lonely island of Pollepel about an hour north of NYC in the middle of the Hudson River. Perhaps you’ve seen it on a train ride north or on a boat tour from Beacon; it has mystified generations of people and now you will have the opportunity to photograph it at night.
This will be a rare overnight excursion limited to 6 photographers, so bring a tent if you think you will sleep, last time we shot until 9am! Thom Johnson, co-founder of the trust and author of the book Bannerman Castle (NY) (Images of America), will be on the island for a historical tour before we set up our tripods and focus on creating some truly outstanding images under the full moon.
Gabriel and Matt will go over the basics of night photography and how to successfully meter, capture star trails, paint with light, and hone your “night vision”. The majestic Castle and Residence will be the main focus but there are many little details on the island that will be yours to capture, including the 'Twins,' rising from the water, that guard the south harbor. This will be a very hands-on, one-night workshop that is sure to add some amazing and unique images to your portfolio.
Links:
Night Photography Workshops (including the Sept 1 Bannerman workshop):

My latest post on Bannerman Isalnd:

My photography site:

My teaching partner, Gabriel Biderman's night photography site:

My social handles:
Twitter @matthill

Everything else: 

Rick's List: Nighttime Photography Gear

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© Rick Sammon
Want to have some fun tonight? Take a nighttime shot.

Above (New Croton Dam) and below (Niagara Falls) are two of my favorite scenic nighttime photographs.

© Rick Sammon
I also like to photograph city scenes at night.

© Rick Sammon
 And even people are fun to photograph after the sun goes down. Below is an HDR shot.

© Rick Sammon
Here's a list of the gear that I recommend for serious nighttime shooter, and why I recommend it.

Powerful spotlight - for painting with light, as in Croton Dam shot.

Headband flashlight - so you can see what you are doing in the dark without holding a flashlight.

Variable density filter - for extra long shutter speeds, as in Niagara Falls shot.

Sturdy tripod - for steady shots in at long shutter speeds, as in all shots.

Ballhead for tripod - for easy composition.

Wide-angle lens - to capture wide scenes.

Cable release - so you don't shake the camera during exposure.

And if you are very serious:

Lightning trigger - to capture lightning strikes.

Tips: 

Think safety first. Wear white at night, as you mother advised.

Use in-camera noise reduction when using long shutter speeds. It's the most effective way of reducing noise.

Experiment with long shutter speeds - five to 30 seconds . . . and even longer.

Try to photograph when there is still a bit of light in the sky.


We shoot at night on most of my workshops. Good fun!


Explore the light,
Rick

P.S. Here's another Rick's List: Nature and Landscape Photography Gear.



















Snapshot to Great Shot: Painting With Light

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The talented students on week one of my Hudson River Photography Workshop are getting some great shots – from dawn to dark. I'll be posting more photographs here in a few days, but for now, I wanted to share with you an image that was certainly a group effort.

After one of our group dinners, several of the photographers dropped by my studio to do some painting with light photography.

The photographers:
Tom Barry
Jay Clark
Ellen Harasimowicz
Angela Marshall
Lisa Acinkewics

The opening image for this post is the painting with light image. Info:
Camera on a tripod
Five-second exposure
ISO 200
F/11
Subject held almost perfectly still

The basic technique: Use a small, low-power flashlight and "paint" the subject with light. After several attempts, you'll get the desired effect. If the subject is too light, reduce your ISO setting - and vice-versa. You can also vary the exposure by changing the aperture. You can also change the exposure by changing the flashlight-to-subject distance, and by changing the speed at which you move the light.

The other photo is a boring, on-camera flash shot that shows how a snapshot can be turned into a great shot.

Have fun with this one.

I hope to see you on one of my workshops. . . which are great fun!

Explore the light,
Rick

P.S. I added the lens flare effect in Photoshop using the Lens Flare filter. I also cloned-out some of the background to make it go almost perfectly black. And, that's an "R" on the left - painted with the flashlight.

Hudson River Photography Workshops Officially Opens

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Week one of our Hudson River Photography Workshops officially opened tonight with a welcome dinner at Samurai Sushi and Hibachi Steakhouse.

To start the photo fun, we did some painting with light. We asked one of the friendly servers to be our model, posing right next to the hibachi table after we turned off all the lights in the room.

Here is Don Elmendorf's painting with light photograph. It's a five second exposure. The light source was a small pocket flashlight - aimed above and directly at the subject, so as not to illuminate the background.

Nice job Don!

Try painting with light. It's fun. You'll need a tripod and a flashlight. Start with your ISO set at 400, your aperture at f/8 and shutter speed at 5 seconds. That's only a starting point. Adjust your exposure accordingly. And... use your camera's self-timer or a cable release.

We also covered HDR, panos and flash photography. And the fun has just begun.

Explore the Light
Rick
P.S. I soften the server's skin in the picture using a technique I'll cover in a later post.