Fiber Fool

On Amber’s last night in town we decided on the last minute to head west out of town and try our hand at some night shots. She had previously gotten some very interesting and artistic shots playing with light sources at night, but I had never tried any night photography. We loaded up the car with tripods and our various and sundry equipment and headed up to an overlook of Horsetooth Reservoir.

There were two things we learned that are essential to night time photography… 1). A Flashlight and 2). A stop watch. We made do by using the dome light in the car and/or the headlights in place of the flashlight. Though that was not terribly convenient once the camera was on the tripod. For the stop watch we counted lengths of walking the parking lot, LOL!

For night time photography you need very long exposures. Our cameras will do 30 second exposures (what was used to capture the top photo of the post), but for exposures exceeding that length you need to use the bulb setting and the wired remote. Thus, to get predictable results or satisfactory ones you need to figure out what your ideal exposure is in the given situation. Given the amount of traffic going by I don’t know how predictable we could be as it was rare to get longer than a 30 second exposure in when a car or two did not pass by. None the less, it would have been good to have a ball park idea of how long of an exposure we were taking and then preview in camera to decide if a shorter or longer one would do.

Despite these difficulties, I did come away with a few decent night shots (the one immediately above being my favorite of the night). My tries at capturing the stars were rather dismal though. I definitely will need to do a bit of reading on how to capture photos of the stars and moon. I’m guessing I did not have the proper lens type for one.