Post #9, Autumn night skies continued

Thanksgiving is soon approaching, and I will be heading home to western Kansas for the holiday.  The last two Thanksgivings have been productive for my night photography hobby.  I was able to take advantage of unseasonably warm weather two years ago for a night photography session, and last year, my hometown added a fireworks display to its annual Light Parade on "Black Friday" night.  (Actually, it was too dry on the Fourth of July to shoot them, so they tied in the display to Light Parade.)

Regardless, I thought this was a cool chance to take pictures of the fireworks and of people enjoying the fireworks.  So I took my camera, my tripod and my cable release to the parade, and set up for the fireworks.  I ended up with around 200 pictures of fireworks, and this is one of my favorites:

The moon was out last year, so I didn't take any pictures of the Milky Way, but instead I wanted to use the moonlight to illustrate the abandoned landscape of the area.  My parents joined me in taking pictures at a vacant farmstead, and here are some shots I took:

I actually took several shots of this tree, hoping to stack the images together to show a time lapse.  Here is a little gif of those shots!

Post #7, Lessons

Two weeks ago, I decided I would try to make my first time-lapse video (see previous post).  Here I would like to share some lessons I learned from that experience:

1.  Be Patient
Time lapse pictures are taken on intervals; when your interval is maybe one and a half minutes, by an hour, you will have maybe 40 pictures to show for that hour that passed.  Passing through 40 pictures in a time lapse video will take maybe 40 seconds if you want to bore your viewers (one second for each picture).  While I'm not setting out to make stunning time-lapse videos on my first attempt at this, I don't want to bore people either.  So I learned to allow myself more time taking pictures, maybe two to three hours!  Which leads me to...

2.  Buy an Intervalometer
Can you imagine staring at your cell phone or other timer in the dark, and pressing the shutter every minute and half?  Well, that is what I did my first night out:  I set my stopwatch on my phone and pressed the shutter as close to a minute and half as I could get.  This was a tedious process and also inaccurate.  I hope to buy an intervalometer to make this process more pleasant for myself, and also, more accurate, as the shutter speed will not vary between still photos, and the intervals will be precise.

3.  Plan in Advance
When I set out for this first adventure, I knew I wanted to shoot the Milky Way.  I found a spot where the Milky Way was visible, but the surrounding landscape was not great.  There was a radio tower in my shot; I could not get it out of frame without picking up something else distracting.  Also, I wanted to take pictures shooting north, toward the North Star.  The rotation of the earth is most evident around the North Star in time lapse photos.  However, since I had only allowed myself an hour to shoot these pictures, I ended up shooting the Milky Way's progression for 40 minutes, and the North Star's progression for 20 minutes.  So I ended up with 20 pictures for the Milky Way and maybe 10 for the other...this does not make for a long, or interesting video!

4.  Post-Editing Can be Fun, but it Takes Work
Finally, with the photos I had, I set out to compile these pictures into a video.  I have a monthly subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud, with access to Photoshop and also Premiere Pro, used often for video editing and compiling.  I had no experience with Premiere Pro, and looked at several tutorials on using the product, including this one:



The first thing I found out was that the landscape format is preferable in video editing.  I unfortunately shot my pictures vertically.   I'm still working on a solution to this, but I'm afraid I will have to crop my video to fit the preferred landscape format.

The second thing I learned is that no matter how good I think I am in learning new software, it will take work to actually pick it up.  It can be frustrating to learn something new, but you have to allow yourself the patience to pick up the experience needed to learn the new software.  I'm still working to learn this software; hopefully it will get better with time (as a college student, I don't have much spare time on this, sad to say!)

So these are my lessons on time-lapse photography.  I hope to share a video I made by the end of the semester, or within the next year.  Some of the best time-lapse videos (below) I've seen have been shot throughout months of a year.

Post #6, Attempting Videography

One goal I had when starting this blog was to make a video.  I don't have experience creating and editing videos, but this weekend I jumped in, and if nothing else, learned how much I have to learn!

My first thought was that I could set my camera to video mode, and shoot.  However, since it is so dark at night, and the shutter speed is so long, I realized that I needed to take still photos and compile them later into a video.  I googled some other time lapse videos and came across some really great videos.  One came with a behind the scenes description: the video was created over several months, taking photos for hours (talking at least 2-3 hours) at a time.  That was one detail I read, but didn't take seriously.  Later I would learn the error of my thinking!

Another google search was for how-to tips.  I was mostly thinking about the compiling technique/software after the photos were taken, but one search result also came with advice on equipment.  The website said I would need an "intervalometer."  I didn't know what this was, and in reading about it, I learned it would take pictures at a timed interval so that I didn't have to keep pressing the shutter to take a picture.  I learned through experience how valuable this would be later.

So going into my first night taking pictures specifically for a video, I was vaguely aware of the challenges I would face, and considered this a "dry-run." So, how did it go?  The answer will be revealed in my next post, when I will share what I learned, what I will need for my next attempt, and challenges I faced with video editing software.  For now, here's a picture taken last weekend.  It is a stacked image, meaning this one picture is actually five images blended together.  Faintly, you can see the stars, blurred by the earth's rotation.

Post #5, Monument Rocks

As I mentioned earlier, I often visit the Monument Rocks in western Kansas.  Partly because it is close to home, where my parents live, but also because the landscape there is interesting, especially at night.  And also because the skies above are dark at night, with no city light evident at this location.

If you have never been there, here are a few pictures of the Monument Rocks at daytime:

Not too long after I first began taking pictures at night, I decided I wanted to drive to the Monument Rocks for a night photography session.  I took both my parents one night, and not totally satisfied with the results, returned two nights later with my dad (important to note that I never take pictures alone at night).  I wanted to experiment taking pictures while "painting" the landscape with a flashlight, since I couldn't use flash.  

One thing I found was that if I wanted to paint the chalk structures, I would have to keep the flashlight moving; if I stayed too long in one spot, it would be too bright in that area.  Also, it seemed that the further away from the pyramids the flashlight was, the more even the light beam was on the pyramids (it covered more area with less light power).

There was one picture, though, that I was particularly proud of:

This picture was taken with help by my dad: he was standing to left, out of frame, with the flashlight.  We were a bit of a distance away, so I had to yell directions to him about where to shine the light.  The exposure time was 38 seconds, in which my dad had to constantly move the flashlight.  The term exposure time is often used with the term shutter speed, so in this case, the camera's shutter was open 38 seconds. 

My dad and I arrived at the pyramids after sunset, but before true darkness had set in, which led to the relative lightness of the sky.  This picture was taken in late November, but the weather was unseasonably warm.  This was good for me, as I hate cold weather, but also good for my camera, as cold weather drains its battery life.  

When we returned home from this photography session, there was a sense of accomplishment shared between me and my dad.  I'm very happy to give him an "assist" on this one.

Post #3, Digging in

So after that first attempt at taking pictures at night, I was determined to get better results.  My first resource was of course, a Google search for "night photography tips."  Being specifically interested in taking pictures of the Milky Way, I came across this article by National Geographic Photographer, Kansas-based Jim Richardson.  This article would later be a great resource for me, but I had to experiment on my own to really take in all its helpful information.

However, from this article and my previous experience, it became clear that my point-and-shoot camera, with its limited options for creative control, would not suffice.  The longest shutter speed (length the film or digital sensor is exposed to light) my camera offered was 15 seconds.  This wasn't enough time to capture details in the sky and the landscape.  The purchase of a digital Single Lens Reflex camera helped solve this problem; I could open the shutter for as long as I wanted.  I could also set the aperture (measurement of the lens opening) to a wider setting to let in more light.  I also could set the ISO (camera's sensitivity to light) much higher than my point-and-shoot camera.

As mentioned in the article, I found that ambient light (existing light) would also greatly affect pictures taken.  If I wanted a picture of the Milky Way, I would have to drive outside of town. I didn't realize how far from town I would need to be, though; this would be something I had to learn from experience.  I hope to go into more details on this later!

But for now, here are a few pictures to show you how light from cities affect how you see the night sky.

This picture was taken about 30 minutes west of Topeka, looking southeast:

And this was taken in western Kansas, also looking southeast:

Can you tell which one was taken near the city?

Post #2, In the Beginning

Every story has a beginning.  My adventure with nighttime photography began over two years ago. My interest in general photography dates longer, at least 10 years.  I took pictures with a point-and-shoot digital camera for many of those years, and this same point-and-shoot camera was the camera I first used when starting out taking pictures at night.  I now use a digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera...more on how that has helped my photography later!

A friend had wanted to test his pinhole camera at night, and so I went along.  He told me, in convincing me to go along, that if I pointed my camera toward the sky for a timed exposure, I could capture different colors in the sky (from the stars, rotating).

In my mind, what I thought I was going to get was something like this:

However, what I ended up with was this:

As you can see (or cannot, since the pictures are dark), my pictures did not turn out as planned!  I was disappointed, but that set in motion my quest to improve these pictures. And so I set out to do some research: how can I take better pictures?  

Stay tuned for some tips I found to improve my photography!