On Saturday night I met up with about 40 other photographers at the Lincoln memorial for a photowalk along the Potomac river at night. The event was setup and hosted by Shawn Duffy and I think everyone that showed up had a great time.
I haven't done very much night photography so I had plenty of lessons learned to take away from this event.
The first challenge I found was not specific to night photography but to my natural tendency to compose tight shots. I felt like I didn't bring a long enough lens. I had my 16-35mm and my 24-105mm lens. I could have really used my 70-200mm zoom to get some tighter compositions. Almost all of my shots were taken near the 100mm range and I was always wanting to get closer. The plus side is that I was forced to think wide and I had to take my time to look for interesting wide angle compositions.
The second challenge I found was getting good focus in a dark situation. On some of the closer subjects I was able to use my flash light to get good focus of the subject. On others I was able to focus on the brightly lighted monuments or buildings. But when I got back to my desk to review the photos, many of them were just too soft. Most of the time I was trying to use the hyperfocal distance to ensure adequate focus throughout the scene. For example at a 100mm focal length and F16, shooting a subject about 200 meters away the hyperfocal distance would have been about 21 meters. That means everything from 21 meters to infinity should have been in focus. So I'm thinking that the softness had to be due to camera shake during a 15-30 second exposure. So I either need to check my ball head to make sure its stable, or it could have been movement on the ground or bridge due to the cars passing by. I will need to go out and experiment some more to try and determine a good solution to this problem.
I haven't done very much night photography so I had plenty of lessons learned to take away from this event.
The first challenge I found was not specific to night photography but to my natural tendency to compose tight shots. I felt like I didn't bring a long enough lens. I had my 16-35mm and my 24-105mm lens. I could have really used my 70-200mm zoom to get some tighter compositions. Almost all of my shots were taken near the 100mm range and I was always wanting to get closer. The plus side is that I was forced to think wide and I had to take my time to look for interesting wide angle compositions.
The second challenge I found was getting good focus in a dark situation. On some of the closer subjects I was able to use my flash light to get good focus of the subject. On others I was able to focus on the brightly lighted monuments or buildings. But when I got back to my desk to review the photos, many of them were just too soft. Most of the time I was trying to use the hyperfocal distance to ensure adequate focus throughout the scene. For example at a 100mm focal length and F16, shooting a subject about 200 meters away the hyperfocal distance would have been about 21 meters. That means everything from 21 meters to infinity should have been in focus. So I'm thinking that the softness had to be due to camera shake during a 15-30 second exposure. So I either need to check my ball head to make sure its stable, or it could have been movement on the ground or bridge due to the cars passing by. I will need to go out and experiment some more to try and determine a good solution to this problem.
Before the event I had some ideas on what I wanted to accomplish. One was to do a little light painting of some statues that are on the bridges in DC. For this shot I had to use my flashlight on the subject to obtain good focus. Then during the 30 second exposure I took my flashlight and painted light on the dark side of the statue. I spent most of my time trying to highlight the faces. I also tried some light painting on the VietNam memorial statue with a blue gell. But I was not as happy with that result.
This was also the first time I have walked across the bridge and shot from the George Washington Parkway side of the Potomac river. This is one location I would like to come back to shoot some more, both during the day and night.
At the end of the walk I started to head towards the metro station and home along the empty reflecting pool. The water is currently drained while they do some maintenance and repairs. There were a couple of puddles of water in the pond and I noticed some great reflections of the monuments. So I ventured out into the pond and took advantage of the opportunity. Its not very often that you get a chance to take a shot of the monuments from the middle of the reflecting pool. The water in the middle was only about an inch deep, so I was able to line up this shot of Lincoln.
Overall I'm happy with the results of the recent walk and I'm anxious to get back out taking photos at night. You can view more photos taken by other photographers on the Flickr group Shawn setup for this event.
This was also the first time I have walked across the bridge and shot from the George Washington Parkway side of the Potomac river. This is one location I would like to come back to shoot some more, both during the day and night.
At the end of the walk I started to head towards the metro station and home along the empty reflecting pool. The water is currently drained while they do some maintenance and repairs. There were a couple of puddles of water in the pond and I noticed some great reflections of the monuments. So I ventured out into the pond and took advantage of the opportunity. Its not very often that you get a chance to take a shot of the monuments from the middle of the reflecting pool. The water in the middle was only about an inch deep, so I was able to line up this shot of Lincoln.
Overall I'm happy with the results of the recent walk and I'm anxious to get back out taking photos at night. You can view more photos taken by other photographers on the Flickr group Shawn setup for this event.
