Category Archives: Digital Night

City of Light

By Harold Davis | Published April 24, 2013

Paris is often called the “City of Light”—perhaps it should also be called the City of Lights. Plural. As in many. You can see in this photo that everything is lit at night, like a giant playground for adults. But wait! There’s more. Every hour on the hour la Tour Eiffel starts giving off sparks like a giant fireworks candle. Stay tuned, many more photos of Paris to follow.

Paris, City of Light

City of Light © Harold Davis

Also posted in Paris | 2 Comments

Bay Bridge Lights

By Harold Davis | Published January 30, 2013

In this image of the Bay Bridge the moon seems to be “captured” within the tower of the Bay Bridge. The image is a hand-HDR blend of six exposures at shutter speeds from 1/2 of a second to 8 seconds. During one of the exposures the lights for The Bay Lights, an art installation and project by Leo Villareal that will come on “for real” on March 5, 2013 appeared briefly (in testing mode I guess), and I painted them in on a layer at about 30% opacity. Note that this light show has nothing to do with the 75th anniversary of the Bay Bridge, which has come and gone—and is simply a rather wonderful art installation.

Moon Captured by the Bay Bridge - Black & White by Harold Davis

Moon Captured by the Bay Bridge – Black & White © Harold Davis

The sequence of exposures in this image was shot during Saturday’s smashing moonrise adventure workshop—which I feel was good photographically and a very successful workshop despite the break-in of my van. I started with color images, combined them, manipulated them in post-production to create an image with an extended range of tonal values—withthe results shown below. To finish the image, I then converted it to black and white, using layers and masking to control how each section of the image converted.

Moon Captured by the Bay Bridge - Color by Harold Davis

Moon Captured by the Bay Bridge – Color © Harold Davis

Also posted in HDR, Monochrome, Photography, San Francisco Area | Leave a comment

Smashing Moonrise Workshop

By Harold Davis | Published January 28, 2013

The San Francisco Moonrise Adventure workshop on Saturday was a smashing success. Despite some unexpected logistical difficulties—due to a demonstration on Market Street—we settled into our Embarcadero waterfront location in good time. The moon rose mostly where it was supposed to, and is shown here over Port Oakland. The photo was shot under the Bay Bridge using my 300mm lens. I’ll be posting more photos of the moon interacting in complex and photographically interesting ways with the Bay Bridge itself!

Moonrise over Port Oakland by Harold Davis

Moonrise over Port Oakland © Harold Davis

Not to take away from the workshop and how much fun it was, but unfortunately “smashing” applies to what happened to my van, parked near the Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco while the workshop was transpiring. The rear window was smashed. The bad guys got a briefcase with my iPad and the prototype of Botanique—currently, the only existing copy.

Well, we’re assembling the actual copies of the edition this week, so there will soon be more copies.

It’s hard to imagine that the smash-and-grab thief has much interest in an archival box filled with oragami-like botanical art. So my fantasy is that it was immediately discarded, and will turn up in twenty years or so when the rest of the copies in the edition are in major museums. There will be much debate about the provenance of the prototype before it is auctioned for megabucks at Sotheby’s.

Returning to earth, if you happen to be wandering in downtown San Francisco and see a box of botanical art in the gutter pick it up! Let me know!

I’m not giving up on San Francisco photography, but will be more careful about where I park in the future. Please consider joining me in the Mission on Saturday February 23—I know it will be a fantastic shoot!

Also posted in San Francisco Area, Workshops | 3 Comments

Lombard Street at night

By Harold Davis | Published January 6, 2013

The idea of this night shot along the famous curves of Lombard Street in San Francisco was to use my shutter speed setting creatively to get the desired effect with the car trails. So the process was to first determine the duration that was about right for the tail lights of a car slowly moving down the curve to fill the frame horizontally.

Of course, there are going to be variations depending on the speed of the car, but the best effects were achieved using a shutter speed duration  in the 8-15 seconds range. With the shutter speed in place, it was easy to calculate the other two components of the exposure equation (aperture and ISO).

Lombard Street at Night by Harold Davis

Lombard Street at Night © Harold Davis

The exposure information for this frame was 12mm, 15 seconds at f/11 and ISO 200, tripod mounted. The exposure works in part because of the ambient light of the background scene, which is bright enough so you can see Coit Tower and the Bay Bridge in the background (as well as nearby houses), but not so bright that it is blown out at the settings that work for the cars.

I shot the image just before Christmas while hanging out with a friend and listening to Christmas carols sung by inebriated cable car passengers going by on Hyde Street.

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When is a river not a river?

By Harold Davis | Published October 13, 2012

It is called the “East River” but—technically speaking—this body of water is actually a tidal strait. The East River connects the Long Island Sound with New York harbor, and the Atlantic Ocean, via the Narrows. Subject to the vagaries of the tides, the not-a-river East River puts the “Island” in “Long Island.”

East River by Harold Davis

East River © Harold Davis—Click to view larger

In New York City I visited a very old friend of mine who lives high up and far to the east in the 70s. This image is shot from my friend’s balcony. I had to brace my camera and tripod against a very stiff breeze. This exposure was made at 24mm for 25 seconds at f/7.1 and ISO 200.

In post-production I worked to paint in the lights which were reflected in the East River. Without some enhancement that tidal strait would have looked mighty dark and dull!

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Star Circles in the Patriarch Grove

By Harold Davis | Published August 31, 2012

Bristlecone Pines are the world’s oldest living things. They have witnessed thousands of passing turns of the earth in the heavens—and, therefore, the stars turning relative to the earth. I feel awe and thanks that I’ve got to share this cosmic show from the Patriarch Grove high in the White Mountains in eastern California near the Nevada border.

Star Circles int he Patriarch Grove by Harold Davis

Star Circles in the Patriarch Grove © Harold Davis

I shot this image while preparing for a workshop I was teaching in the Patriarch Grove. I positioned my camera to capture a north-facing landscape, and used an extremely wide-angle lens.

The foreground was shot before it got fully dark at 1/250 of a second, f/8, and ISO 200.  Without moving the camera on the tripod I waited until after dark and shot 35 images at 4 minutes, f/2.8, and ISO 400 to capture the stars.

To render the stars whirling in the skies I stacked all the four minute exposures together using the Photoshop Statistics action, then blended in the foreground image to make the Bristlecone Pines and the details of the Patriarch Grove visible.

For more about the Bristlecones and the Patriarch Grove see My Favorite Bristlecone and Distant Night Storm.

Also posted in Landscape | 1 Comment

Shortlisted in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2012 Competition

By Harold Davis | Published July 9, 2012

I am honored that my image Distant Night Storm in the Patriarch Grove has been shortlisted in the Royal Observatory Greenwich Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2012 competition. Click here to read my original blog posting about how I made this image.

Distant Night Storm in the Patriarch Grove by Harold Davis

Distant Night Storm in the Patriarch Grove © Harold Davis

Also posted in Photography | 2 Comments

Portraits in Fire

By Harold Davis | Published June 24, 2012

At the recent Photography with Harold Davis night event at Sutro Baths, my friend and colleague Steven Christenson lit the night with scouring pads and magnesium. If you are interested in learning more about the night magic that Steven creates, check out his StarCircleAcademy blog.

Man in the Middle by Harold Davis

Man in the Middle © Harold Davis

Spinning Fire by Harold Davis

Spinning Fire © Harold Davis

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Golden Gate Moonrise

By Harold Davis | Published June 4, 2012

Capturing a dynamic range that includes detail in both the moon and the night landscape is essentially an unsolvable problem. The moon is as bright as daylight and the the night is as dark as night. So even if you create a bracketed sequence that covers this roughly 20EV light-to-dark spread you’ll come up with an image that looks unrealistic to people. Photo-compositing in the moon is even worse: unless you are very careful and unless you get the astronomy right it simply looks fake.

Golden Gate Moonrise by Harold Davis

Golden Gate Moonrise © Harold Davis

When the problem is unsolvable, the answer is usually to compromise. With this image of the moon rising behind the Golden Gate Bridge I bracketed for HDR in a short dynamic range. The image is comprised of three exposures, shot at five seconds, ten seconds, and twenty seconds. I used a tripod and an 18mm focal length, setting the ISO to 200 and the aperture to f/6.3. I processed the images by hand in Adobe Camera RAW and Photoshop, and partially blended in a layer created from the three exposures in Nik HDR Efex Pro.

In no respect does the image capture the entire dynamic range between the moon and the dark night landscape in the foreground and to the right. But there is far more suggestion of color and details across the dynamic range than there would  have been in any single shot.

Also posted in HDR, Landscape, Photography, San Francisco Area | 1 Comment

Full Moon Rising

By Harold Davis | Published May 9, 2012

Before I get down to explaining the images of the “super” full moon rising that accompany this story, let me point you (in case you may be interested) to a few recent stories that feature me:

Full Moon Rising by Harold Davis

Full Moon Rising © Harold Davis

I shot this image during a recent Golden Gate Bridge and Full Moon workshop I gave. The moon was rising behind the Golden Gate Bridge from Battery Spencer in the Marin Headlands.

I used my intervalometer (remote programmable timer) to make 333 exposures while I went around to the people in the workshop to see how they were doing. So the camera shot this image on autopilot—and I didn’t have to do anything!

Each exposure was for 2 seconds at f/22 and ISO 100, using a 400mm focal length on my 1.5X crop Nikon D300 (effective 35mm focal length of 600mm). There was a one second interval between each of the exposures.

I started the sequence of exposures with the moon on the lower left of the frame because I knew the moon would move diagonally up, and I wanted it to stay in the frame as long as possible. The camera was unattended, so I had no way to know during the exposure sequence how well this was working.

When I looked at the captures on my computer, the moon started to leave the frame at the 170th exposure, so I had 169 exposures to work with if I wanted to keep the moon within the frame.

I used the Statistics script in Photoshop Extended to stack the 169 exposures. Stacking all the images together yielded a fat, blurred line: proving once again that sometimes it is possible to have too much information!

I found (by trial and error) that stacking every 25th exposure (for a total of eight exposures) gave interesting results in which you can see some detail in the moon.

The partial transparency in the final images was achieved by combining a stack created in Maximum mode in the Statistics script with a stack created using Mean mode in the Statistics script, each stack containing just the eight images.

The lines on the right are, of course, Golden Gate Bridge cables.

I should add that this makes a very cool print in either the black & white or color version, sized small, on Moab’s Moenkopi Kozo Washi rice paper.

 

Lunar Progression by Harold Davis

Lunar Progression © Harold Davis

Also posted in Monochrome, Patterns, Photography, Photoshop Techniques | Leave a comment

Who owns the night?

By Harold Davis | Published April 7, 2012

Who owns the night? In many California parks and public venues clearly not you or me. Anyone who has spent much time photographing at night has certainly experienced being kicked out of state parks and other supposedly public spaces after sunset.

Case in point: the other day on the spur of the moment I was shooting before sunset from an overlook above Purisima Beach just south of Half Moon Bay (see photo). It was clear and beautiful, but cold and windy in the late afternoon. I was the only person there.

Purisima Beach at Sunset by Harold Davis

Purisima Beach at Sunset © Harold Davis

This land was preserved with the help of the Pensinsula Open Space Trust (POST)—click here for the POST story of this genuine accomplishment.

My appreciation for the wild landscape and the accomplishment in preserving it for prosperity was diminished when a docent arrived to tell me I had to leave at sunset. Personally, I had no problem with the docent, who was affable, and who informed me he was paid a small stipend. But it is surprising that money can be found for this in a day and age in which parks are closing for lack of funds.

I also don’t get the thinking behind ejecting people who genuinely want to use the land in benign ways—like night photographers.

I started this story by asking, “who owns the night?” A better question might have been, “For whose benefit are lands like the Purisima Trail being preserved?” I think this preservation serves the purposes of neighboring land owners and farmers (nothing wrong with them, by the way) rather than those like me who want to “take only photos and leave only footprints.”

As an action item, I would urge public land trusts and others charged with the administration of parkland to also consider the interests of those who like to be out in the night when establishing policies. This is the stance of the US National Parks, which do not restrict access at night. The night should belong to all of us—and if you take away the freedom to be out in the wilderness landscape at night we all lose a great deal.

To learn more about my night photography, check out my Night Photography Gallery, the Night category on my blog, and my Night photos on Flickr.

Also posted in Bemusements, Landscape, Photography, Writing | 1 Comment

Ladyboot Arch

By Harold Davis | Published November 21, 2011

This is an image of Ladyboot Arch, named for perhaps obvious reasons, shot in the Alabama Hills on the last night of the recent Star Circle Academy workshop.

Facing the snow-covered crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, seen through the arch, on a chill November night, I wanted to make an image that showed details in the arch, the sky, and the distant mountain range.

With bright moonlight coming from the left of the camera, but parts of the arch deep in shadow I knew that some pretty fancy footwork beyond star stacking would be needed to capture the extended dynamic range of the scene.

To learn more about night photography, check out the night category on my blog and the Star Circle Academy blog. If you are interested in star stacking, you may find the Stacker’s Checklist particularly helpful. The subtext here is that “stackers” are definitely not “slackers”.

All exposures 12mm, tripod mounted; background (star trails) forty-two one minute exposures at f/4 and ISO 200, combined using stacking; foreground (arch) three exposures (90 seconds at f/14 and ISO 200, 211 seconds at f/14 and ISO 200, and 390 seconds at f/8 and ISO 640) combined to HDR using Nik HDR Efex Pro; foreground and background combined in Photoshop using layers, masking, and the Paintbrush tool.

Also posted in Landscape, Photography | Leave a comment

Arc of the Blue Sky

By Harold Davis | Published November 18, 2011

On the day before the Star Circle Academy workshop began I shot with some friends and early workshop arrivals in the Alabama Hills. It was a clear night, but the wind was brisk. After I found a sheltered spot I was able to shoot a sequence with no problems.

This image is from a position very close to that of where I shot from in Alabama Hills Star Trails, but looking up and north rather than out and south.

To make this image I used my 10.5mm digital fisheye and used my intervalometer to shoot 45 exposures at 90 seconds each (aggregate exposure time a bit over an hour). Each exposure was made at f/3.5 and ISO 400. I stacked the exposures together using the extended version of Photoshop’s Statistics script, with the stack mode set to Maximum. The moon light was bright enough that I didn’t have to worry about light painting the foreground (or shooting a longer exposure for the foreground).

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Yosemite at Night

By Harold Davis | Published November 16, 2011

On a balmy autumn night in early November I treated myself to a good dinner at the Yosemite Lodge restaurant. Then I headed out into the Yosemite Valley night with my camera, tripod, and intervalometer.

This image was made from the Swinging Bridge, facing back towards Yosemite Falls and Yosemite Village. I combined different exposures for the foreground and for the stars. Yosemite Valley was lit by moonlight, which helped make the foreground exposures possible.

The landscape in the foreground was made from an HDR blend of three exposures, shot at roughly one minute, two minutes, and eight minutes. The star trails in the sky were created from 21 exposures shot at one minute, and then stacked. I combined foreground and background in Photoshop using a layer mask and the Gradient Tool.

All exposures were at 15mm, f/4 and ISO 320.

It’s striking to me that the moonlit landscape in the foreground has as great a dynamic range as daylight shots. Looking at the eight minute exposure, bright areas like the cliffs and meadows that the moon lit touches are bright. But the shadows below the trees along the Merced River are still deep and inky in their blackness.

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Saline Valley Star Circles

By Harold Davis | Published November 10, 2011

About fifty miles down the desolate Saline Valley road, one valley to the west of Death Valley, as the sun set, I stopped to camp for the night. I set up my camera with an external power supply, turned it to face roughly north, and let it rip while I slept.

There are 306 two-minute exposures in this sequence, for an elapsed exposure time of about ten hours. I started at 6PM and turned the camera off at 4:18AM, when cloud cover obscured the northern sky.

Processing the 306 exposures was more of an ordeal than shooting them. I ran them in a single stack using the Photoshop Statistic script—and after about three elapsed hours it crashed Photoshop. Clearing some space off my working hard drive helped, as did running the stack divided in three—with the pieces combined into a single image.

Exposure data: 10.5mm fisheye, 306 exposures, each exposure at two minutes, f/2.8, and ISO 320, exposures stacked using Photoshop Statistics set to Maximum; tripod mounted.

For more about the technique I used in this image, see Stacking Star Trails and (for night photography techniques in general) the night category on my blog and the Star Circle Academy blog.

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