File#: 1941032 * Nikon Z7, Nikkor 24mm f/1.4, [ISO 8000, f/2.8, 25 sec (Sky)], [ISO 8000, f/2.0, 30 sec (Foreground)] --- * Let the record show, I have an interesting relationship with some of my favorite subjects. What does that mean? It only means, I enjoy the places differently that most other people. No, I don’t do anything weird or unusual with these locations, other than I shoot them so they look interesting to me. I mean, the connection I have with them, the interaction I have with them is different. What can be different with an ancient Anazai ruin location? I haven’t laid eyes on it in anything other than pitch black night. * When I was a kid, my grand parents used to live in Arizona. For a few years in the early 70’s, my sister and I used to visit them for a few weeks to a month. I recall one of the best things we did was exactly what I do now, visit Arizona’s many sites. The Wupatki National Monument just northeast of Flagstaff was one of those locations. I definitely recall visiting there more than once during one of those vacations with the grand parents. I remember walking among the ruins. I even recall me trying to imagine what the places looked like when they were occupied hundreds of years before. All that was more than 40 years ago. * Fast forward to nowadays, I am fairly periodic visitor of Flagstaff when spending the night traveling between Southern California and my home in Southern New Mexico. About two years ago when first getting into night photography, I looked at the map and noted Wupatki was just 20 miles northeast of Flagstaff--conveniently located for night shooting. * Since the whole point of night photography is not about the sunrise and sunset, I rarely try to mix sunlight photography with my night shooting. That meant, the first time I visited Wupatki since those trips in the 70’s, meant exploring the place in the pitch black. I won’t say it was intentional, but I’ve been back there two more times and each were also night photography shoots. I have yet to see these subjects in the broad daylight. * Does that matter? Probably not all that much, especially now that I’ve visited the same sites multiple times. I have a familiarity with the locations even though I haven’t laid clear eyes on them. * When making images in these conditions, there are definitely fewer elemental distractions because you literally can’t see them. Big features dominate the compositional choices. Small details are obvious and mostly dis-regarded. Basic design rules dominate instead of making subtle compromises that can only be judged in brighter conditions. The biggest features are place in the most classic compositional locations and everything else is left to fall out as an after thought. * The biggest challenges shooting in these conditions are the many exposure choices always prevalent with night photography. Wide apertures and narrow depth of fields rule the environment which is contrary to normal day-light photography. High ISO settings and associated image quality degradation has to be understood to reliably predict what images will look like at the end of post-shooting production. All these choices occupy my mind much more than trying to take advantage of subtle terrain features that might make compositions more compelling. Shooting at night makes compositions simple. You literally don’t have the distractions of too much to see and you mind is much more pre-occupied with other tasks. * I’ve had good success shooting Wupatki at night. I’m not sure if visiting it during the day will improve my results or cause me to overthink what I’m doing by trying in incorporate what I saw in the day and couldn’t see at night. In other words, I don’t feel compelled to visit the place in normal light. * This composition is comprised of 25 images captured in two separate groups five were made with exposures tuned for the night sky. The other 20 were combined into four layers used to reduce noise in post-production and with exposure values tuned for the foreground. The raw images were converted using Capture One. The pano layers were combined with PT Gui. The whole image was finished with Photoshop. * Cheers * Tom * #arizona #night #nightphotography #nikon #nikonphotography #wupatkinationalmonument
File #: 1941004 * Nikon Z7, 14-24mm f/2.8, ISO 8000, f/2.8, 30 sec --- * Shooting at night is a challenge. There are many things you don’t have much control over and many others you can’t see with your own two-eyes. In this image’s case, it’s about image noise and color. The former there are limits to what you can control. The latter, you can’t even see with your own eyes when you’re out in the field. Both present challenges especially in post production. The issue is how do you keep the noise down--noise being inherent with all digital cameras when shooting at night--or adjust the colors so it’s all pleasing to your own eye? These are really good questions. * Today, we’re talking about colors. What some people don’t realize when viewing really awesome nature photography, rarely are the images they see straight out of the camera without any production work on the computer. For some reason, there are people who view images that were “tweaked” as less impressive than those that supposedly weren’t. I think this impression comes from people wishing to see nature in all its glory and not some sort of digitally made up image that's interpreted by a person. What these people don’t realize is all these images are tweaked one way or another otherwise the images wouldn't look so awesome. The bottom line is, cameras do not capture the world the way our eye-balls see the world. To match up what you capture with what you envisioned when shooting always requires a bit of tweaking. That's a fact of life with digital photography. * Night photography presents its own challenges because in the daytime, the photographer can at claim with a straight face he tried to match what he “saw” when he pulled the trigger. He tried to match his image to the world, the view he saw with his eyes. At night, that’s impossible. Humans literally cannot see what your camera sees. It’s impossible. While you can see the outline of the Milky-Way on a clear night, there is no way your eye-ball can see the tremendous colors revealed by a long exposure taken at night. The camera sensor is too sensitive. The human eye simply does not have the light capture ability to see those colors. What this means is when you see a night image with a beautifully rendered Milky-Way as part of the image, it’s completely made-up in the sense the photographer did not render the image to match his vision when he shot the image. When he shot the image he did not “see” something to match. * When I create night images, I fully embrace the idea I am not doing nature photography as I would if saw everything with my own eye-balls. I fully acknowledge night photography with its post-processing and Photoshopping is well past the extreme that might’ve set-off those folks who dismiss tweaking nature photos. * I think that's okay. * In my book there is so much in the night sky being captured by our cameras that needs to be shown off. The atmosphere at night has a phenomenal amount of color you’d never see in the day. The thing about night shooting is the photographer doesn’t have the eyes on connection to with the subject like in the day. * The challenge when shooting mostly blind is getting the colors right during post-processing. Cameras are simply all that awesome at capturing colors correctly. Even in daylight, you have to adjust the colors to make the images look just right. Sometimes the colors are too bright--artificially accented by the camera. Other times they aren’t brilliant enough. I always adjust my nature images one way or another. Essentially, I’m “correcting” what my camera does not capture well. * With night photography things are complicated because there’s no reference to base correction on. Photographers cannot see unusual blues, greens and even warmer colors to use as first-hand experience . Tweaking colors during post production is done to “taste.” This means, “...as tasteful as you think it should be.” This is a very interesting development for a nature photographer because they usually try to make final photographs that represent what was seen out in the field. With night photography, there’s no “this is what I saw” about it. * The image here has a very deep blue, greens and other colors I definitely didn’t see when I shot it. However, the colors are clear as day on my computer screen. The question is, what are the nuanced colors and their relationships supposed to look like. The data is there. It’s recorded. But, what are the tonal characteristics? * Since there’s no reference to judge the colors, I simply tweaked to taste in post processing. In many respects, it’s the most manipulative version of nature photography I do. I’m fine by that since it still mostly represents what I envisioned. It’s a matter of taste after all. * Cheers * Tom
