Posts under ‘Nighttime Photography’

This past year has been a rough one for many of us.  Some of us have lost:  a home, a job, huge chunks of retirement savings, or, worst of all, a loved one. 

On New Year’s Eve I like to contemplate the past year’s events and my hopes for the new year.  Although it was a trying year for us, I know that we are very blessed to have what we do and I am very thankful for everything.

We had our dear friends Scott, Deanna, and Asia over and we played foosball, lounged around in our PJ’s in front of the fireplace and then got bundled up to go out onto the patio at midnight with our cocktails.  It was a nice, mellow way to spend the evening.  It was amazing to see the full moon was right overhead on the patio.  It was a blue moon, which is a full moon that happens outside of its normal pattern, making this a very special night considering it was New Year’s Eve and this blue moon only happens once every two to three years. 

Here are a few of my New Year’s resolutions (in no particular order).  I won’t share all of them as I’m keeping some just to myself:

1.   Cook more often and learn how to make some new yummy and healthy dishes.

2.   Find more time for myself, especially photography, reading, and exercise.

3.   Get better at foosball so I can earn the hubby’s respect in that arena.  Ha!

I don’t think I’ve ever kept a New Year’s resolution for the entire year, but it always feels good to start the year fresh with some good goals in place.   I’m human and totally imperfect, but I’m going to do my best.

I want to wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year.  And, when I say prosperous I don’t necessarily mean financially.  It’s far more important to feel prosperous by the relationships and friendships you’ve formed with the people in your life that you love.  I hope everyone enjoyed the blue moon last night.  I certainly did.  Below is a photo of the blue moon seen through our patio.  I tried to do something a little bit different in Photoshop with it. 

I took this photo while we were out on the patio.  I didn’t use flash and found that there was enough ambient light to get something.  You can’t really see my hubby or Scott there, just their figures and especially someone’s white socks.  The look of this photo reminds me of “Film Noir,” it’s kind of cool and artsy but also a little scary.

Tonight for my Photography Portfolio class we went on a mini field trip around UCSD, which BTW is quite a lovely campus.  Our instructor Leland showed us how to photograph at night using the flash off camera.  I have something else to add to the list of gear I want – an extension cord so I can use my flash off camera (the list continues to grow).  We had a lot of fun seeing the different effects you can get using the flash on and off camera and painting with light (a mag light) using a slow shutter speed.  I shot the above photo of another building right behind the Geisel library, but from the looks of the interior it is another library as well.  Maybe it’s part of the Geisel Library?  I’m really not sure since I didn’t attend UCSD as an undergrad.  Anyway, the distorted angles of the windows and the light are what caught my eye for this photo. 

Here’s a shot of part of the Geisel Library, although you wouldn’t be able to tell since it’s more of an abstract shot.

Tonight I went to Don Gale’s Photo Workshop at the Cabrillo National Monument.  Most of his lecture I had already heard during his free seminar at REI a month ago so I went out on my own and started shooting. 

The opportunity to photograph this enchanting place was well worth the $35 fee, especially since they kept the park open late just for us and tomorrow they will open it extra early as well.  We can get there as early as 5:30 am but I’m hoping to get there by 6am.  It will be interesting to see how different everything looks in the light of dawn.  I admit I’m a little worried about waking up that early as I’m a night owl and I usually don’t wake up until 8:30.  I must get to bed soon!

I learned a lot more about nighttime shooting and now I know I really need a flashlight to help me focus.  It was extremely challenging as the light faded away.  I kept trying to get this one shot with the tree and the sliver of the moon but no matter what I did the moon was more of a big splotch.  I think my focus was off but it was so hard to tell with so little light.  The above two shots were the best ones I got.  I’m sorry I don’t have any cliche skyline shots.  I was too engrossed with these shots that I ran out of time.

Here are a few more shots but the focus is a little off.   I really wanted the moon to be in better focus. I’ll have to figure out how to expose the moon properly for next time.

Tomorrow morning I will try again with a flash light.  I’m definitely learning by trial and error.  It is very difficult to shoot the moon, however I do love to shoot the moon (in the metaphorical sense as well) – LOL!

Moonflowers I

Moonflowers II

This evening I went on a solo photo shoot at Balboa Park so that I could reshoot some of the lovely waterlily flowers in the reflecting pool.  There was another photography class on their field trip around where I was, which actually made me feel safer to stay longer and shoot more photos.  I don’t think I would have stayed as long as I did if it weren’t for them–I actually blended right in with the group and no one bothered me.   It’s always a concern of mine to be shooting at night alone with expensive photography equipment.  I love night time shooting but I don’t do it much because of the safety issue and it’s definitely best done with a friend. 

Last weekend when I was there on my class field trip we were all enchanted by these cool flowers in the reflecting pool that look like little shower heads.  They look they could come to life, start talking to you, and then squirt you with water.  I wanted to come back to photograph them during the softer light of twilight, so that is what I did tonight (bless my husband’s soul for supporting me, taking good care of Little A ,and putting him to bed so that I could do this).

I sort of figured out how to use Photoshop Lightroom (which BTW is not easy to figure out on your own when you’ve been a Photoshop user) to lighten and darken certain areas in order to lead the eye where you want it to go.  In this photo, I darkened the area around the flower and lightened the flowerhead to draw attention to it.  I hope my first attempt was somewhat successful.

I also got some nighttime shots of Balboa Park–ones I’ve always wanted to get but the light wasn’t that great.  While I realize that just about every photographer in San Diego has shot the botanical building and all of the gorgeous architecture in the park, I wanted to photograph them for myself regardless of how over-photographed they are. 

It was also a great opportunity for me to learn how to use my new ballhead tripod.  This was the first time I really tried to use it out in the field.  In the beginning I struggled with it (felt clumsy and unsure) but I left feeling much better about how to use it.   Now that I’ve gotten the hang of it, I am amazed by how much easier it is to use than my cheapie tripod that I got when I first got into photography.

Here are a couple of my “token” Balboa Park photos.  I thought the botanical building and the reflecting pool looked stunning at night.

Botanical Building

I would just like to say that I did it: I made it to day 30 of Project 365 without missing a single day of posting.  A whole month down, 11 more to go….I’m patting myself on the back.  Hooray for me.  Ok, now moving on….

My husband and I joined our friends Paige and Fernando at the Coldplay concert last night.  It turned out to be an evening of true serendipity.  We had nose bleed lawn section seats (aka the poor man’s section).  We only paid $25 for these seats.  But little did we know that luck was coming our way.  After they played a few songs on stage they surprised everyone and moved into a small stage in the audience.  They were still quite a ways away from us but we could see them better.  Then I noticed that directly in front of me by about 10 rows a roadie was setting up a mike stand.  What!?  Then, guitars were being set up while a few people around us were beginning to notice and started howling and cheering.  I’m thinking to myself, “curb your enthusiasm and keep it on the down low so people don’t rush over here, try to get in front of us and step on our feet!” 

OMG!  Two songs later they played mine and Paige’s favorite song “Green Eyes” (acoustic) right in front of us.  Yup, they played several songs on a small stage right where we happened to be standing in the lawn section and it was amazing.  Another highlight was “Billie Jean”, a tribute to MJ.  I got that on video too. 

I never dreamed I’d get any cool shots from this far back but good fortune came our way.  I traded off between my Cybershot and my iphone camera and here are a few highlights.  There are a bunch more to be viewed on my Flickr page under “Concerts.”  Thank you Coldplay for playing for us in the nosebleed section.  You made our night!

Let me just say first that I absolutely adore this film. It is super high quality film that’s great for low light photos and it gives you that desirable film grain (not the ugly digital kind).  I really love the tones I got from this film as well.  It is quite interesting how different these are from the digital ones I took with my Sony Cybershot.  I like how someone described what Holga photos look like:  “what life is like through a drunken sailor’s eyes.”  I really wish I could quote that person but I read it online somewhere and I can’t remember where (mommy brain). 

Every photo on this roll that I took with my camo Holga is different.  Seeing as how I only had 12 shots and I have never used this film I tried something different for every shot.  Here are the most interesting ones:

Andrew Bird playing the violin

This was a straight shot with the normal Holga shutter speed.  I had plenty of light still and now I know this for future reference using this film again.

Taken on the bulb setting and holding the shutter down for @ 30 seconds. 

This was another straight shot with the regular shutter speed.  The light was fading so the picture came out a bit dark.  I lightened it up so you could see their faces better using shadows/highlights in Photoshop.

This is a classic for me: I forgot to wind the film or didn’t wind it correctly in between shots so these two ended up blending together.  I’m not sure what I’ll do with it but I do love happy accidents like these.  This is what makes toy camera photography so much fun!

The Andrew Bird concert tonight was simply amazing and to top it off we got our tickets for free!  Date night with my hubby and hanging out with our good friends Deanna and Scott “on a boat” - like, wow!   The weather was so nice and warm and the Hornblower is quite the venue for an intimate show like this.  I loved the ambiance of tonight and I’m blown away by Mr. Bird’s singing, violin playing, and most of all his whistling.  Yes, he sounds like a songbird when he whistles so his name is very appropos.  It really is something!  I felt very lucky and grateful to be there.  In fact, even Andrew Bird exclaimed a few times, “we’re on a boat!”  LOL

As the sun started to set and we had that wondrous “magic” light falling on the bay with the Coronado Bridge in the background, I went crazy and took a bunch of photos with my Sony Cybershot.  I also shot with my Golden Half camera (which BTW I still have not reached the end of my first roll yet) and my Holga toy camera.  I had Ilford Delta 3200 B/W film loaded in the Holga and I’ve never shot with it.  I hope I got a few good ones on that 12 shot roll.   I just could not decide on a favorite and this was a special occasion, so here are eight of my favorite shots from tonight.  Again, the Cybershot continues to perform exceptionally well and hits the exposure right on.  I love this little camera!

Update:  I just joined this in order to keep me motivated to post to my blog everyday–National Blog Posting Month.   The theme for July is “Routine” (although it is just a suggestion and not a required theme to blog about), which seems to suit my Project 365 well.  For one whole month I have to post to my blog everyday, which shouldn’t be too hard since that was already my goal with Project 365.  So far I have been pretty good about it and have found that posting my picture a day (for 365 days) and blogging about it has become somewhat of an evening meditation for me and I’m enjoying it very much.  After I put my little one down for bed I enjoy the time I have to myself to look at the photos I’ve taken for the day and select the best one to post and blog about it.

For today’s entry, the photo is of Rebecca–one of the women who hosted tonight’s “First Friday” all female meetup (which was the first meetup ever).  We talked about each other’s top 5 goals and it was very interesting to hear them.  Someone’s goal was to be a MILF.  LOL!  I was flattered that they thought I was one, although I thought I had to wait until my son is in high school to see if his friends think I’m hot or not.  But, beyond the comical side of that term, MILF means having a healthy, balanced life. 

We decided that each month we will explore a creative topic and learn it together.  Possible future themes could be beading, cooking, dancing, or even a book club.  I really like the idea of First Friday and having this kind of support network.  I hope that we will get to know each other more as we find more creative outlets together.  Next month’s meetup we will make collages that express some of our life goals (of course they can be totally abstract art too).  I happen to love collages so I am very much looking forward to this.  This was my lovely friend Deanna’s idea.  Anyway, as we were leaving, Rebecca was striking a fun pose in the window and being silly so I shot a quick photo of her.  I really am loving my point and shoot Cybershot–such a convenient camera  to help me catch a quick moment.  I’m impressed that this camera gets the exposure right almost everytime.

Rebecca (First Friday)