Although I missed his presentation, I had signed up for Lance Keimig’s night photography workshop on June 9, 2012. I bought his book last year, even asked Dennis to take it to the NECCC conference, to have Lance sign it for me. Since then, I read the book, made mental notes on night photography, but have not tried doing it until the night of the workshop. The book, Night Photography- Finding Your Way In The Dark, is very informative, and easy to follow. I highly recommend it.
Night Photography is Different
The variables are a little different from daytime photography, so are the vision and sensibility. Working in the dark requires close familiarity with the equipment. Here, the quality of the camera does matter, especially the high ISO and long exposure noise handling.
The meeting place was under the new Route 195 bridge in Providence. When we arrived with Dennis, there were a few friends already there. I had not been to that part of Providence and was surprised by the number of nightclubs and associated noise. Luckily, we did not need to get too close to the clubs and the noise, the audible variety, was not a problem.
Find Your Location
Lance quickly explained how the night was going to work and asked us to review the camera settings to make them conform to the information he had provided via e-mail. Everyone went to their chosen location, Dennis and I walked down the street a little to the other side of the bridge where there was a clear area. We set up the tripods and went to work.
The first few shots were almost “must take” shots of the power plant and its reflection on the water. Luckily, the hurricane barriers were down to accommodate the Water Fire event on the river. That kept the water level steady with no visible current. It was quite straightforward, aim, frame, focus, set exposure, shoot. Using the live view setting for framing and focus was almost a must, and it made the process that much simpler.
Our cameras, Canon 5D Mark II, were particularly good with long exposure noise reduction and the resulting images show very little noise or noise reduction artifacts. Dennis went down further for a while, I remained around the same area.
You Can Move to a Different Location
Later on, we decided to drive to South Water Street, which gave a clearer view of the city skyline and a different angle to the power plant for night photography. I used the large steel sculpture, which I call the steel doughnut as a framing device, as well as the subject of the last few photographs. The opening photograph is a stitched panorama of five separate shots at 40mm focal length. Although I could have taken the same view in a single shot, the panorama gave me a larger file for printing bigger sizes.
The image above is a comparable view shot at 24mm focal length. Its dimensions after the adjustments and perspective correction are 5,541 x 3,424 pixels, about 19 megapixels. The opening stitched image dimensions for comparison are 10,192 x 6,298, or about 64 megapixels. The difference is about 3.4 times the size. The single-shot can be comfortably printed at 300 PPI to yield an 18.5″ x 11.5″ print, whereas the stitched image at the same PPI will yield a 34″ x 21″ print.
A Review Meeting for Night Photography
The next day, we all met at the Marriott Courtyard meeting room for a review of the night’s work. Everyone submitted four photographs, and Lance went through every single image, providing helpful comments and suggestions. Although the session was scheduled between 1-4 PM, it was after 5 PM when we left, Lance was generous with his time. I enjoyed the night shooting and participating in the review and post-processing session.
Thanks, Lance, see you for the next part sometime.
London – Boston