Blog | 67 - The Dark Side
| Freelance Photographer in St Ives Cambridgeshire: Food & Drink Photography; Commercial Photography, Product Photography & Packshot Photography; Event Photography; Portrait Photography; Corporate Photography & PR Photography; Engagement Photography & Wedding Photography and Photography Training Courses in Cambridge, Huntingdon, Peterborough, Bedford, Ely, St Neots, St Ives and London. Professional Photography Services in St Ives, St Neots, Huntingdon, Bedford, Peterborough, Ely & Cambridge. | |||
 
|
Alistair Grant Freelance Photographer Cambridge & London |
||
|
bokeh photographic: Blog No: 67 → TIP: Click any image to view in LightBox |
|
||
|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
The Dark Side The trouble with most photography websites, videos, magazines etc. that claim to give instruction on how to shoot night-time urban landscapes is that they assume the location will be a populous cityscape – think London – with very brightly lit high-rise buildings, numerous streetlights, illuminated billboards & neon signs and lots of traffic with headlight/taillight streams. It’s a fair assumption that most people’s local urban landscape is not as illuminated and as a result possibly far less gaudy? This makes for a different photographic challenge and just maybe a more interesting one? Cityscapes at night are surprisingly bright with a more even distribution of tones than less populated urban areas thanks to light pollution diffusion and reflections from glass-fronted buildings etc. Although by definition nocturnal cityscapes are high-contrast they are invariably less contrasty than most nocturnal urban landscapes. Aside from the village in which I live, St Ives (the Cambridgeshire version), is my nearest urban landscape if a small market town on the edge of the Fens can be categorised as such. The town is dominated by the river and I have previously noted how the renowned architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner wrote: ‘St Ives has put its river, the Ouse, to good use visually. The river is indeed good enough to be made a feature of it’. At night the St Ives riverside is reasonably well lit but it still contains deep shadows with a relative dearth of mid-tones and overly bright highlights - note the medieval bridge. In other words, a high-contrast over-scaled scene that exceeds the dynamic range of digital cameras. Human eyesight has little problem simultaneously distinguishing shadows alongside highlights thanks to the rod photoreceptors that lie in the outer retina. This low light but not fully dark scene is an example of mesopic vision as the overall light level has a luminance between -3 cd/m2 to 0.05 cd/m2 - sunlight has a value of 5 cd/m2. Rod activation predominates to allow object discrimination in the low-light although cones are also engaged as we can perceive colour. The highly-simplified objective of capturing this scene photographically can be summarised as allowing sufficient ‘reserve’ in the shadows for post-production lightening without under-exposing or over-exposing the highlights in-camera. Amateur photographers often find such scenes extremely challenging as they follow their normal photographic routine, which invariably results in highlight clipping, and so overcompensate to then produce an overly dark shot. Other than correct metering other problems frequently encountered include (auto)focus, colour balance, digital noise and achieving acceptable sharpness. So how such a shot should be approached? Unfortunately I’m not going to reveal all as this shot was taken as part of a planning session for a bespoke one-to-one Photography Training Course - I’m also considering running a group session if there is demand. However, I will disclose that this was a single exposure of <30sec as this is the slowest shutter speed available on most digital cameras† NB: I’m ignoring ‘bulb’ which I used to shoot another St Ives night scene as to use this mode properly requires a timer release which most people don’t have. In terms of overall luminance the image is more subtle than conventional night-time shots and is more befitting of the far less artificially illuminated St Ives that Pevsner so admired. Apart from appearing picturesque and providing a focal point/lead-in line the Great Ouse obviously reflects light. I’m not just referring to the artificial lights reflected in the water but the ambient light provided by the three-quarter moon out of shot. My back-of-the-envelope calculations from light-meter readings when the moon was obscured by cloud is that moonlight lifted the overall light level by two full stops. I’ll finish with an unexpected hazard: those lovely reflections in the still river were disturbed when I first setup as all the resident swans made a dash towards me thinking I was about to feed them. I had to wait 20 minutes in the freezing cold for the ripples to subside! †For those thinking why not shoot three or more bracketed exposures I did so immediately prior to this shot at -3EV/0EV/+3EV although the result was not markedly superior to this shot. |
|||
|
Call Alistair Grant on 07775 365507, Email [email protected] or click Booking Enquiries if you have any questions or would like to make a booking. |
|||
|
bokeh: "the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens" Freelance Photographer offering Food & Drink Photography Cambridge; Commercial Photography Cambridge, Product Photography Cambridge & Packshot Photography Cambridge; Event Photography Cambridge; Portrait Photography Cambridge; Corporate Photography Cambridge & PR Photography Cambridge; Engagement Photography Cambridge & Wedding Photography Cambridge and Photography Training Courses in Cambridge. Also covering: Huntingdon, St. Ives, Ramsey, St. Neots, Peterborough, Bedford, Stamford, Newmarket, Sawtry, Alconbury Weston, Brampton, Hartford, Warboys, Houghton, Wyton, Godmanchester, Hilton, Hemingford Grey, Hemingford Abbots, Fenstanton, Whittesley, Yaxley, Needingworth, Somersham, Chatteris, Ely, Bar Hill, Grafham and Buckden. |
|
||
|
bokeh photographic - Alistair Grant | Freelance Photographer | Cambridge, London, UK - Creative Natural Photography And Outstanding Customer Service At Competitive Prices - Food & Drink Photography | Commercial Photography & Product Photography | Corporate Photography & PR Photography | Portrait Photography (inc. 'Active Portraiture', 'Naturally You' & 'Poptraits') | Event Photography | Engagement & Wedding Photography | Photography Training Courses & Camera Tuition | Videography & Film Production Tel: 07775 365507 | Email: [email protected] |
|||
