Night and Low-Light Photography Photo Workshop E-Book

Alan Hess

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Finally! A resource that sheds light on the unique challenges of night and low-light photography

With their unique sets of challenges, night and low-light photography are often touted as some of the most difficult and frustrating genres of digital photography. This much-needed guide demystifies any murky topics provides you with all the information you need to know from choosing the right gear and camera settings to how to best edit your photos in post-production. Renowned photographer Alan Hess shares techniques and indispensable tips that he has garnered from years of experience.

Helpful projects and full-color stunning photos in each chapter serve to educate and inspire, while assignments at the end of every chapter encourage you to practice your skills and upload your photos to a website so you can share and receive critiques.

• Details best practices for taking portraits, landscapes, and action shots in night or low light
• Features specific coverage of concert photography and low-light event photography
• Answers the most frequent questions that photographers face while tackling this challenging technique

Packed with invaluable advice and instruction, Night and Low-Light Photography Photo Workshop doesn?t leave you in the dark.

Leseprobe

Night and Low-light Photography Photo Workshop

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Night and Low-light Photography Overview

Shooting Challenges

Lack of light

Freezing action

Digital noise

Light

Using available light

Adding light

What gear is important

Camera supports

Camera and fast glass

Shutter-triggering devices

Postproduction software

Choosing your subjects

People

Places

Events

The night sky

City lights and landscapes

Chapter 2: All about Light and Exposure

Direction and intensity of light

Direction

Intensity

Light sources

Measuring The Available light

The built-in light meter

Metering modes

Exposure Settings

Shutter speed

Aperture

ISO

Exposure modes

Equivalent exposures

Multiple Exposures

Exposure bracketing

Exposure compensation

Combining multiple exposures

HDR

The color of light

Different light sources

Color temperature and the Kelvin scale

White balance

Chapter 3: What Gear is Important

Understanding the Camera’s Capabilities and Limitations

The high ISO and digital noise problem

Bulb mode and long shutter speeds

Lenses

Focal length

Maximum aperture

Constant- and variable-aperture lenses

Vibration reduction and image stabilization

Flash units

Using a single flash

Off-camera flash

Using multiple flashes

Tripods

Tripod legs

Tripod heads

Extras

Monopods

Shutter Releases and Remotes

Timers

Chapter 4: People and Places indoors

Photographing People Indoors

Window light

Using a flash or flashes

Building interiors

Choosing the best lens for the space

Dealing with multiple light sources

Chapter 5: Weddings, Concerts, and Other Events

Weddings

The ceremony

The reception

Photographing Concerts and Events

Know your gear

Stage lighting

Metering modes and manual exposures

Capture the moment

At the Fair

Exposure considerations

Those great rides

Chapter 6: Shooting Sports

Sports Venue Lighting

Indoor lighting

Outdoor lighting

Freezing the action

The right shutter speed

Pushing the ISO

Know the sport

Study the sport

Time your shots

Chapter 7: The Nighttime sky

Sunrise and sunset

Setting the exposure correctly

Start early and stay late

Shoot the moon

Picking the right focal length

Exposure settings

Double exposures

Time-Lapse Photography

The gear you need

Picking the right subject and settings

Working out the math

Creating the movie

Star trails

What is stacking?

Ambient light

Putting it all together

Photographing Fireworks

Adjusting the exposure

Why manual focus is the way to go

Chapter 8: City Lights

Street Scenes

Safety first

Using different shutter speeds

Light trails

Capturing traffic flow

Move the camera

Use the zoom

Neon

Exposure considerations

HDR

Cityscapes

Location, location, location

The best time to shoot

Exposure concerns

Chapter 9: Light Painting

Light Painting Basics

Use light to show the subject

Use light to fill in dark areas

When the light is the subject

Lighting tools

The flash

Flashlights

Sparklers

Painting with light

Shooting in manual mode

The proper exposure

Playing with the light

Photographing people

Postproduction and image stacking

Abstract images

Light patterns

Chapter 10: Low-Light Landscapes

Photographing landscapes in low light

Exposure considerations

Moonlight as a main light source

Long exposures

Dealing with vibration

Flowing water

Turning night into day

Chapter 11: Digital Postproduction

Software Options

File types

JPEG

RAW

Picking the right format at the start

Noise reduction

Reducing noise in Adobe Photoshop Elements

Reducing noise in Adobe Lightroom

Noise reduction plug-ins

Adjusting the White Balance

Adjusting white balance in Elements

Adjusting white balance in Lightroom

Adjusting for Color and Exposure

Adjusting the lighting and color in Elements

Using layers, layer masks, and blend modes in Elements

Adjusting the color and exposure in Lightroom

Night and Low-light Photography Photo Workshop

Alan Hess

Night and Low-Light Photography Photo Workshop

Published byJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.10475 Crosspoint BoulevardIndianapolis, IN 46256www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-13822-9

Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

Alan Hess is a photographer and author based in San Diego, California where he lives with his wife and two dogs. He has written books on both photography and technology including the Exposure Digital Field Guide, Composition Digital Field Guide, iPad Fully Loaded, and the iPad 2 Fully Loaded. His concert and backstage images appear in numerous online and print publications and they have also been used for promotional purposes, including music packaging.

Alan has been a part of the Instructor Dream Team for Photoshop World where he taught classes on concert and event photography and the basics of Exposure and Composition. He has written articles on concert photography and Photoshop for Photoshop User Magazine.

His website is www.alanhessphotography.com where he writes a semiregular blog or you can find him on Twitter as ShotLivePhoto.

Credits

Acquisitions Editor

Courtney Allen

Project Editor

Cricket Krengel

Technical Editor

Haje Jan Kamps

Copy Editor

Marylouise Wiack

Editorial Director

Robyn Siesky

Business Manager

Amy Knies

Senior Marketing Manager

Sandy Smith

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Richard Swadley

Vice President and Executive Publisher

Barry Pruett

Senior Project Coordinator

Kristie Rees

Graphics and Production Specialists

Jennifer Henry Andrea Hornberger Jennifer Mayberry

Quality Control Technician

Melissa Cossell Lauren Mandelbaum Dwight Ramsey

Proofreading

Laura Bowman

Indexing

Potomac Indexing, LLC

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my wife for enduring yet another book with crazy hours and weird schedules. This time at least it made sense as I was out creating the images for this book mostly at night.

Big thanks go to Courtney for all she does in getting me the right projects and to Cricket for trying her hardest to keep me on track, which is nearly impossible no matter how good my intentions are. Also, a big thanks to Haje for all his work making sure all the numbers and tech stuff are right. If you find something that’s wrong, it just means I didn’t fix something I should have. You can check out his work at http://kamps.org.

To the great group of photographers who helped with images, I couldn’t have done this without you. A huge thanks goes out to all of you:

Kenny Kim for his help with the wedding chapter and all that goes into photographing some of the best weddings ever. You can find out more about Kenny at www.kennykim.com.

Larny Mack for his insight into photographing interiors and the use of his images to illustrate the point. Check out his work at www.larnymack.com.

Jacob Lucas for the use of his great star trails image, I can’t thank you enough. His work is at www.jflphotography.com.

E. Howe-Bryne for the star trails image. It is a great shot and I am honored that you allowed me to use it here. For more on E. Howe-Bryne check out http://littleredtent.net/LRTblog.

Ken Toney who supplied the image of the flowing water and the use of the neutral density filter, it’s a great photograph and I thank you for its use here. Check out Ken’s work here: www.kentoneyphoto.com.

To everyone at Nik Software especially Laurie, Janice, and Kevin, thanks for everything. Working with you and your products is always a joy.

Dedication

For Nadra

Introduction

It’s easy to take photos on a bright sunny day. With plenty of light, it’s easy to freeze the action, and you can use low ISO settings and get virtually noise-free images. The real challenge and excitement start when the light goes down.

Digital camera technology has come a very long way since I bought my first camera. The new cameras have more advanced built-in light meters and metering modes that allow photographers to focus more on the composition. The problem is that these advances don’t really help when it comes to shooting in very low light or at night. There is no way to use the light meter when photographing fireworks or when painting with light for example.

The good news is that this book deals with all those situations where the camera might not be able to capture the image correctly. This means starting at the beginning and covering the basics of light and exposure settings as well as the importance of understanding the color of light and white balance. Many types of photography can be done with any type of camera and lens, but there are certain types of low-light photographs that are made easier by using a lens with a wide aperture and the high ISO capability of the camera along with the accessories, like a tripod and cable release that make long exposures possible. All this and more are covered in Chapter 3.

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 deal with photographing people in various low-light situations, from portraits to concerts and even sports. This includes dealing with adding your own lighting, freezing fast-moving action, and dealing with scenes that the camera’s built-in light meter just can’t deal with consistently.

Next up is some of the most enjoyable photography you can do at night, and that is photographing the night sky — from sunsets to the moon, star trails, and fireworks. This is the type of photography that just can’t be taken any other time. Chapter 7 is all about photographing the night sky, and Chapter 8 deals with city lights, light trails, and one of my favorite subjects, neon signs.

Chapter 9 covers light painting from the traditional to the experimental and a fun technique that you can do in any darkroom with a flashlight and a piece of string that will amaze people. I don’t want to give it away here, but the results of this technique will have people wondering exactly how you did it without a computer.

Chapter 10 is about taking the traditional landscape photography and doing it at night when the long exposures reveal details that you just never see during the day. It also addresses how to deal with the very long exposures that can literally turn night into day. To wrap it all up, Chapter 11 visits the digital darkroom and postproduction using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop Elements. Topics include adjusting the white balance, dealing with digital noise, and using blend modes.

So turn the page and jump right into the very interesting world of night and low-light photography!

Chapter 1: Night and Low-light Photography Overview

Shooting Challenges

Light

What Gear Is Important

Choosing Your Subjects

Photographing at night is challenging because there is usually less light available, and the less light available, the harder it is to get a proper exposure. This also applies to low-light situations such as shooting indoor events or sports, or even the kids just playing in the living room. The basics of photography don’t change when the sun goes down or the action moves inside, but the tradeoffs become much more noticeable.

The lack of light means that you have fewer choices for the settings that you can use to create a photograph, and the challenges of getting the image to look exactly the way you want increase. When it comes to getting the proper exposure, there are only three controls that can be changed: the shutter speed, the aperture, and the ISO. Controlling these settings to get the shot you want in reduced lighting conditions is key. At times faster shutter speeds are needed to freeze movement, and at other times slower shutter speeds are needed to show the full movement. There are times when a wide aperture is needed to allow as much light in as possible, and other times a smaller aperture is needed to create a deep depth of field.

For example, in Figure 1-1, taken from a ferry dock at Coronado Island with the San Diego city lights in the background, I needed to use a setting that exposed the sky and the background, but I also wanted a deep depth of field. I started with a low ISO (100) to keep the digital noise to a minimum, and then set the aperture to f/10, which gave me the depth of field I wanted. Then I set the shutter speed long enough to get the exposure I wanted. Because the shutter speed was 2.5 seconds, I made sure the camera was properly locked down in a tripod and used a cable release. I then corrected the color by adjusting the white balance in postproduction.