For as long as I can remember there has always been a frustrated photographer in me that wished for the equipment and the knowledge to take the shots I’ve seen in the people and places around me. A few Christmases ago, when he finally got sick of the wistful longing, Charles bought me one of the nicest and most useful gifts I’ve ever received – a Canon DSLR camera. My DSLR finally unlocked much of those suppressed desires converting the dream into reality and I’m on an amazing voyage of discovery with my beloved Snappy.
I’ve had Snappy for a few years now and I’ve followed the amateur rule – use the automatic function for at least six months while you learn to identify and frame a shot and then, when identifying and framing shots becomes second nature, start refining your technique with the features*. I’m up to that part where I’ve started experimenting with the features but I still have a long, long way to go. Luckily for me there’s a wealth of how-to guides on the Internet and so I’m picking things up at my own pace and testing them out as I go.
This week’s challenge was night photography. After an excellent crash course on this particular subject, which you can see here** I decided to head out for some experimentation. I wasn’t aiming to score some spectacular shots – I just wanted to experiment with the shutter times to get a feel for what would work. I chose three subjects to play with…a close-up of a building (St John’s Church ), a medium distance (Reconciliation Place Canberra from Mount Ainslie
To give you an idea of why this sort of experimentation is important, here are my photos of St John’s Church
At two seconds;
At four seconds;
And finally, at ten seconds.
And again from Mount Ainslie
At ten seconds...
...then at fifteen...
...and finally at thirty seconds.
Notice the dramatic differences in shutter speed? Notice the wildly different effects you get? She is a steep learning curve, no?
On my little adventure I learned a number of things about shutter speeds but I also learned a lot about going on night time photography jaunts. In no particular order, some of the rules and tips for night photography;
1.) Don’t drink a litre of Diet Coke before you head out to keep yourself awake. Just go a bit earlier instead.
2.) Don’t go and shoot on a Saturday night unless what you want is a study of drunken morons in their natural habitats. If they weren’t stumbling through the shot giggling they were trying to educate me using their own extensive knowledge****.
3.) When your stupid amount of caffeinated beverage of choice is ready to leave the building, don’t try and use the public toilets.
4.) Don’t try and go on the side of a busy road either.
5.) Apparently terrorists might photograph buildings late at night for nefarious purposes. For this reason the diligent Police being paid by taxpayers to ensure nothing gets blown up are very interested in discovering whether people taking photos from long distances of buildings at night are photography students or terrorists. Keep your ID handy and don’t try and be cute. Or sarcastic.
6.) Not all the people in a cemetery on a Saturday night are dead.
* Apparently it is much easier to learn the technique after you’ve learned the “feel” of photography and there are a stack of people out there that did it the other way around and now have technically brilliant photos with crappy composition.
** I love Gordon. Not only is he succinct in his explanations (got a short little span of attention) but he uses a Canon to demonstrate. Love, love, love.
*** If you’re wondering why I didn’t line my shot up with Anzac Parade and the photo looks off centre it’s because there was a couple having intimate relations right where I would have needed to be and for some bizarre reason asking them to move felt intrusive and rude. Especially given how…involved…they were.
**** Um…shouldn’t it have a night setting? *smugly* Mine has a night setting.
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