Venice at night... and how to make a new Twitter background...

Venice was the first places I photographed in Italy. It will always hold wonderful memories! It was right before Christmas and many restaurants and businesses had beautiful decorations and colorful lights. This little restaurant on the waterfront had pumpkin ravioli with a pumpkin and nut sauce, yes... it was delicious! Venice is a maze of walkways and waterways. The gondolas were left at the dock in favor of water taxi's because of the freezing weather, but it was still, all and all, just wonderful.

This night shot was enhanced with a layer of texture from Flypaper Textures, and the Impasto filter from Alien Skin Snap Art. I like the brushstrokes of color and texture throughout the image. I made this my Twitter background for a new and different look. Click on this link http://twitter.com/#!/debsandidge to see the background, and please join me on Twitter! Want to make a new Twitter background? Resize your image to 1600 pixels wide, 1200 pixels tall,  and save as a jpeg no larger than 800k. In Twitter, upload your image under Settings>Design>Change Background Image. That should do it, and hope to see you on Twitter! ~ Deb

PS - All coupon codes are in my sidebar (DEB0902 for everything Alien Skin).  Click on the links to visit the sites, and please feel free to use any codes for plug-ins you'd like to try!

Black and White, or Color? HDR in Downtown Orlando...

Black and white photography has a timeless appeal that can create an emotional response that's different from color. Light, shadow, pattern, texture, and tonality work beautifully together to create an expressive image independent from the connotations color. Black and white can romanticize an image, look at the wonderful work of wedding photographers! Much of the appeal for me started with film photography, and making my own prints, messy but a lot of fun! This was taken in downtown Orlando at twilight as a three shot HDR merged in HDR Efex Pro. The image was converted to black and white with Nik Silver Efex Pro which can create an elegant traditional film look. Try it and see! You can use my coupon code for a discount for everything Nik! Have fun in the digital darkroom! ~ Deb

A little romance... with Alien Skin Snap Art

What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Italy is a very romantic place!  Outdoor cafes everywhere, candles, flowers even on the coldest of days. I liked this couple walking arm in arm and couldn't resist taking their picture walking under a canopy of blue stars. The scene looked as if it could be a artistic painting rather than just a photograph. To complete the idea, I used Oil Paint in Alien Skin Snap Art which creates wonderful brushstrokes of color throughout the image. We will be covering this technique in my 4 week online course Enhancing Images and Creating Works of Art at BetterPhoto.com. There is still time to sign up and join the fun! Make great pictures. ~ Deb

Raining? Don't put your camera away just yet...

Rain can create a wonderful opportunity for dramatic photographs. In Florence recently, it rained around the clock, creating an especially beautiful effect in the evening. I love the look of reflections cast on rain soaked streets. It creates a more expressive image than a photo taken during the day. Paired with a long exposure to record taillights from passing cars, a scene can become quite magical! 

Here are couple of tips to help you with capturing a captivating night scene... You'll need a sturdy tripod, remote shutter release (or use the camera self timer feature). An inexpensive three axis bubble level helps guide you to keeping things straight, especially in the dark. If you are using a lens with vibration reduction or image stabilization, turn it off while on the tripod. If you wish to photograph streaks from the taillights of passing cars, you may need to stop down so that your exposure is several seconds or longer. Use a low ISO to prevent noisy images. Bring an umbrella, a hotel shower cap, it works great to protect the camera, and bring a flashlight too. Have fun shooting! ~ Deb

Shine on...Star Trails at Rocky Mountain National Park

Yeah, we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars and the sun. ~John Lennon

Rocky Mountain National Park is one of my favorite locations to photograph. Everything changes dramatically with the seasons, and at night, it's absolutely beautiful! This was taken a few days ago on a very clear and cold night at an overlook I like to shoot from. There were countless stars in the night sky, and I saw a few shooting stars as well. Lenticular clouds filled the sky earlier in the day that were amazing, including this one last cloud that stayed for hours. 

This image is the result of about 45 exposures  using Interval Timer Shooting with the Nikon D3 and Nikon 14-24mm lens. The images were stacked in Photoshop CS5 Extended using Image Statistics. One of my longtime favorite filters, Nik Color Efex Pro Glamour Glow added subtle softness and saturation to the image. 

Interested in night photography? Please join me in St. Augustine, Florida this April at Florida's Birding & Photo Fest. I'll be leading a couple of fun workshops on nighttime photography, and don't miss my presentations on HDR, Creative Photography, and Infrared Photography too! Hope to see you there!  ~Deb

Hope to meet you at Florida's Birding & Photo Fest in April!

Mark your calendar for April 27 - May 1 for Florida's Birding and Photo Fest in St. Augustine, Florida! This is a great event packed with adventure and fun, and it's not just birds... Take a peek at the presentations, workshops, activities and events scheduled in one of the most historic and photogenic areas in Florida.

I'm very excited to be an event speaker again this year. Look for my presentations:  HDR - Creating Dynamic Images, Digital Infrared Photography, and A Creative Approach to Digital Photography. Plus, I absolutely love night photography, so I hope to see you on my Night Photography workshop in beautiful downtown St. Augustine!

There is a bird rookery that attracts hundreds of birds that are easily photographed from a boardwalk at the Alligator Farm. If you like alligators, you are in luck! Last year was a lot of fun and I met so many fantastic photographers. Come on down for photography, friendship, fun and FOOD! Florida has the best seafood ever. I hope to meet you there!  ~ Deb

The Heart of Times Square... #HDR

The heart of Times Square... this is the place to be at twilight in New York City! I enjoyed walking in the cool crisp air and seeing all the colorful lights. I can only imagine what it must be like to be here during the holidays! For this image, I used a Nikon 14-24mm lens with a tripod and cable release and made several exposures to merge to HDR. 

Shooting people in low light levels creates a bit of a challenge. (Which reminds me of the great t-shirt that Joel at Adorama gave me at PhotoPlus Expo emblazoned with "I shoot people for a living" - too funny and thank you, Joel!) In Photoshop, I placed one of the original exposures under the HDR image, and used a layer mask to reveal clarity on some of the faces in the crowd. The image was processed with the new Nik HDR Efex Pro.

Happy Friday, and enjoy the weekend! ~ Deb

  

Starlight over Indian River Lagoon...

The Indian River Lagoon is one of my favorite places to photograph on the east coast of Florida. The night sky transformed this familiar place into something magical. Palm trees along the shore are silhouetted by the light from countless stars. This photo reflects about 40 minutes exposure, using a Nikon 16mm fisheye lens. The position of the camera (facing west) creates a "falling star" look (arc) rather than the concentric circles that occur with the camera oriented north or south.

What do you need for photographing the night sky? You'll need your camera, tripod and shutter release. Determine the white balance by making a few test shots. I dialed in a white balance setting of 2500K. If you are shooting consecutive images, turn off noise reduction as the longer interval between shots will leave gaps in your star trails. I used my camera's interval timer to shoot the stars in this photo. I also use Nikon's MC-36 multi-function remote, and I'm experimenting with a Promote Control. You can also make a single long exposure if you wish, anything goes!

Interested in night photography? Come down to Florida's Birding & Fotofest this spring! I'll be presenting on night photography, infrared, and how to get creative with photography and Photoshop. Hope to see you there!

Photographing stars and star trails...

The east coast of Florida is one of my favorite locations to photograph. As often as I've shot there, I have never photographed it at night. It's more beautiful than I ever could imagine. It's amazing how many stars there are out there, and how many more can be appreciated by just taking a photograph.

You can make a photo like the one above by using a fisheye or wide-angle lens to capture as many stars as possible. You can also take many consecutive photos and stack them to create a single photo  to create star trails as shown below.

I used a 16mm fisheye lens, f/4 and a 30 second exposure. For consecutive exposures to create the star trails, I used the interval timer feature in my camera (Nikon D3s). Your camera may have this feature, or you can use an intervalometer. The interval timer on my camera is set to record one exposure (30 seconds) every 33 seconds for as many shots as my battery will allow. Noise reduction is turned off to allow for consecutive shots, and image review is turned off to save battery life. I focus manually and find it helpful to make several test shots to determine ISO, and verify the overall exposure.  Experiment with longer exposures, however keep the interval between exposures consistent, or there will be gaps in the star trails.

Here's what you will need for star trails...  A clear night, tripod, interval timer, flashlight, a location without a lot of noise pollution and a compass. You can look for Polaris, the north star, or just use a compass to locate north (or south)  if you wish to shoot circular trails. I use my iPhone compass, it works great!

If you want to experiment, you may be able to do this in your own backyard, as I did with the images below. This is good practice for any clear night.

Star trails don't always have to be recorded as circular, there are no rules! The photo below was taken with an 8mm circular fisheye with the camera facing up in my driveway.  I had to rescue both cameras as it started to rain. Even on this "clear" night, clouds rolled in quickly, so keep an eye on the weather!

You can use a script in Photoshop to stack the images. If you are using Photoshop extended, choose File>Scripts>Statistics, and set the stack mode to Maximum. I make any tweaks and adjustments to the stars in camera raw and convert the images to tif files. You might want to experiment with other software stacking programs, PC users can look into Startrails. You can also blend the images in Photoshop by stacking and using a blend mode of Lighten. (However this will take a while if you have a lot of images)!

I'm just getting started with stars and star trails, and I'm very excited about it! I like the way the stars look in the first image, but the star trail images are so interesting too! Don't forget to consider an interesting foreground element. I used HDR for the foreground in the last two images to create a better balanced image. Have fun shooting!

More Star trails...

This is the most challenging locations to photograph. I think I'm parking in an impromptu boat ramp for overnight fishermen. Several monster sized 4x4 trucks appointed with extra large headlights on top of the cab drove by during the evening, illuminating the trees, foreground, and probably the next city. I wanted to create a time lapse with the images, however this worked out well instead! This was the result of over two hours of exposures at f/4, 30s with a Nikon 16mm fisheye lens using the Nikon D3s interval timer. My iPhone has a compass, which is great to locate north - the center of the star trail. It's still too hot and rainy here, and I'm sure this will be better to try when it's cooler, but good practice in any case! If you like stars, this is the greatest site "Astronomy Picture of the Day".  If you like to record star trails, please share your photos with me! I'd love to see them.
~ Deb