Photoblog 2.0

It was a dark and stormy night. Actually, it was a San Francisco fogbound night. I was out shooting with a guest from Finland. The fear was that the low ceiling would make photography unrealistic, but sometimes the apparently worst weather produces interesting imagery, so we heeded the siren call of the Golden Gate.

I stopped the photo shown here down to f/22 for a long exposure, and opened the shutter up for three minutes (at ISO 100).

Workshop notes follow below the photo.

Siren Call of the Golden Gate, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Harold Davis Workshop Notes

For your reference, here’s the link to the main Harold Davis Workshops & Appearances page (you can check for current information and new events as I schedule them) and here’s what those who’ve attended Harold Davis events have said about my digital photography teaching.

• Friday, October 9 – Sunday, October 11, 2009: Night Photography Weekend Workshop in the historic Coastguard Boathouse near Chimney Rock, outer Point Reyes, California under the auspices of Point Reyes Field Seminars. I’m very excited that the Park Service has agreed to open the Point Reyes lighthouse specially for us on Saturday night, weather permitting. My Point Reyes night photo workshops do sell out, so I’m giving my readers advance notice. This workshop hasn’t been posted yet on the Point Reyes Field Seminars registration site, but you can register before the workshop is publicly advertised by calling 415.663.1200 extension 373.
• Friday, September 25 – Sunday, September 27, 2009: Night Photography Weekend Workshop
  I’m excited to be giving this night photography workshop under the auspices of the Center for Photographic Arts in Carmel, California. There are some wonderful night photo shooting locations in the Carmel and Monterey area. Information and online registration is now available; you can also call 831.625.5181 for registration.
• Saturday, July 18 and Sunday July 19, 2009: Digital Post-Processing with Harold Davis (weekend workshop) This hands-on weekend workshop explains multi-RAW processing, hand HDR, black & white in Photoshop, photo-compositing, stacking star trails, creative use of LAB color, and more. There are still some spaces available (class size is limited to 16); here’s the link for information & registration.
• Sunday, July 12, 2009: Digital Landscape Photography Workshop Point Reyes Field Seminars,
  Point Reyes, California. This late afternoon and early evening half day workshop provides a gentle opportunity for guided shooting on Point Reyes as well as a discussion of landscape photography and digital post-processed in the context of participants own work and interests. Registration link.

I’ve given my Digital Night website a face lift. The upgrade includes a fancy slide show, links to my free night photography technique webinars, and some of the night imagery I’ve created recently. (It’s been more than a year since I added imagery to the site.)

Please visit, and let me know what you think!

I’m pleased that two of my images, Blue Velvet Sunset (above) and Winter Sea (below), were chosen for Blue Nocturne, the online exhibit of night photography marking the twentieth anniversary of The Nocturnes.

Came Both Mist and Stars, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Briefly noted: It was a wet, misty Yosemite night. The fog clouds that were almost snow only seemed to be getting denser. Facing south down the Merced River I was surprised to see stars. In post-processing, this twelve minute exposure looked more like something pictorialist or impressionist than a modern photo.

Related story: Yosemite at Night is looking the other direction from Swinging Bridge (with far less mist).

Yosemite at Night, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

With the boys tucked safely in bed I headed out into what proved an increasingly moist night. Wet fog enveloped most of Yosemite Valley, but there were odd pockets of open sky. From Swinging Bridge, I had a pretty straight shot at the stars over Yosemite Falls. The falls themselves were partially hidden by the darkness and fog, but the entire cliff face was illuminated by the light pollution from Yosemite Lodge.

This is a twelve minute exposure with my 10.5mm digital fisheye at f/4.5 and ISO 100.

View this image larger

I finished my exposure stack as the first light of dawn hit the top of Yosemite Falls. Turning round, I saw the tree in this photo in silhouette. I snapped a four minute exposure against a sky that was turning blue, but with stars still visible.

Waking up, I glanced at the clock. It was 3:49AM. The kids were sleeping peacefully in our room at Yosemite Lodge.

I dressed for winter, and headed out into the night. The paths were icy but the stars were crisp and bright. I made my way to a clearing in the woods below Yosemite Falls. Easy enough in the day, but a little harder to find at night. I knew Polaris was right above the Falls. In other words, Yosemite Falls was pretty much due north when standing in the valley, implying that star circles above the falls would work well.

View this image larger.

This is a stacked composite of ten four minute exposures at f/3.5 each, at ISO 200, using my 10.5mm digital fisheye, for a total exposure time of forty minutes.

By the last exposure, dawn was coming to Yosemite. I processed this capture separately in order to layer in early morning colors in the mountains and water fall.

Then I headed back to my sleeping kids in their warm beds.

Related story: Starry Night.

Tugboats, Port Richmond, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

It’s well known that the California East Bay city of Richmond has serious crime problems. Less well known is the fact that it is home to a massive working port and a new national historic park that celebrates naval manufacturing during World War II.

Near the waterfront sit acres of unsold cars imported from the orient. In today’s prosaic world the fabled “riches of the orient” have been replaced with fungible vehicles that may be unsalable. At night, the vast parking lots look bizarre under mercury vapor lighting, with paper covering car hoods.

A narrow road follows the coast with the parked, imported cars behind a chain-link fence on one side and the working harbor on the other. Exploring this route the other night I came upon these tugboats and their reflections.

I made exposures at a wide range of times, but I like this relatively short four minute exposure best because it leaves the water dark and allows the colors of the reflections to stand out.

North Fork, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

The north fork of the Point Reyes peninsula stretches through historic dairy farms and rolling green hills towards Tomales Point. Caught between the Pacific Ocean and Tomales Bay, this spit of land faces across the water towards Bodega Head and the northward marches of the California coast.

On a recent weekday I picked Julian up from school and drove out to Point Reyes. We made the end of the Tomales Point road a few minutes after sunset.

I used my fisheye lens and set my interval timer for fifteen four-minute exposures. My plan was to stack the exposures (the aggregate exposure time was an hour).

I pointed the camera north to maximize the circular effect. I was also going to layer in a light version of the first (and brightest) exposure, so that the Pierce Farm buildings maintained by the National Park Service could be seen in the foreground.

With the camera on autopilot for an hour, Julian and I lay back on the grass downs and traced the star constellations. We saw a couple of shooting stars that are not apparent in the image, and a couple of satellites you can see on the right side.

After a while Julian said, “Dad, I know one of the purposes of the universe.”

“What is it?” I asked eagerly.

“The purpose of the universe is to be mysterious.”

I suppose maybe he is right. Certainly, the more we know about life the more mystery emerges, and this is independent of our empirical understanding of the way things work.

Night Shift, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

From a location with a panoramic view of the Golden Gate, I watched as day shifted to night. In this thirty second exposure, I was intrigued by the contrast between the bright moon, the car lights navigating the Headlands, and dark area in the shadows.

The Power of the Moon, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

On Tennessee Beach the powerful moon lit the scene so it seemed almost as bright as day in this thirty second exposure.

Setting Venus, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is an eight minute exposure showing Venus setting into the Pacific looking west from Tennessee Beach.

Morse Code, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Turning my back on the Golden Gate Bridge, I photographed out the Golden Gate, past Kirby Cove, towards the open ocean. The star trails in this image form a short-long, the letter A in Morse code. You can see this better looking at the image larger.

I made two captures, the first at five minutes, and the second at eight minutes. The shorter star trails go with the shorter exposure, and the longer trails with the longer exposure. Stacking star trails is usually done with many exposures created using an interval timer, but I stacked with only two to see what would happen. I used the Maximum mode in Photoshop’s Statistics script to get the effect.

And they say the stars don’t speak.

Moonset over San Francisco, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

The view of San Francisco Bay out to the west from Indian Rock in Berkeley was a bit hazy. But the setting crescent moon and nearby Jupiter and Venus were very special. I spent a little more than an hour photographing the descent of the moon. I varied the exposure time between one and three minutes as the light faded. I also varied the interval between exposures, with a gap between the early exposures and none at the end.

I stacked all the exposures together using the Photoshop Statistics action. I think my computer took more time thinking about combining the nineteen exposures than they took to expose in the first place. Well, it seemed that way.

Pigeon Point, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Ever year on a Saturday in November, they turn on the bright light behind the fresnel lens on the old Pigeon Point Lighthouse. The San Mateo coast is beautiful anyhow, and on a summer-like Saturday the scene turns into a circus with literally hundreds of photographers, police lines, and crowds.

If you know me, you’ll know that I don’t much like crowds. I certainly don’t find them conducive to serene photography. When confronted with a group of shooting photographers, I generally look for an alternative solution. I’m not shy, I just don’t like to work around loads of people.

At Pigeon Point, I drove south past the lighthouse, found a place to park, and hiked out to a rise across the small bay. With a great view across the bay at the lighthouse, I was the only one there in a wild and romantic spot above the pounding surf.

I didn’t have much time for star trail image creation: the light went on at 6PM, which was just about the tail end of sunset. By 7:15 or so the moon would be up.

This one is fourteen separate exposures combined in Photoshop for a total exposure time of about an hour. I used my digital fisheye lens to maximize the curvature of the star trails, and made sure to include Polaris in the composition. The erratic red line above the lighthouse is a small airplane that decided to join the fun.

Related images: Stacking Star Trails; Night at the Point Reyes Lighthouse; my Stacked set on Flickr.