Photoblog 2.0

Guiding Light, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

The Point Reyes Lighthouse is one of my favorite night photography subjects. This was shot during a recent workshop I gave with Point Reyes Field Seminars. I’m lucky that each of my night photo workshops has been allowed down the steps to the lighthouse, although the weather hasn’t always been the greatest!

Here are a couple of my all time favorite Point Reyes Lighthouse images: Night at Point Reyes Lighthouse and Edge of Night.

Hill, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I’ve been thinking about lines in composition, and black & white. Here are two examples where both visual effects come into play.

Above: A fence divides the water utility (EBMUD) lands from the public park in East Bay, and a path follows the fence up the hill. You actually have to payan annual fee to hike on the EBMUD land, and they have their own private force policing this.

Below: How often do you see a sunset in black and white? It’s like seeing flowers in monochrome.

Watching this sunset fron the end of Point Reyes, I was surprised how contrast increased as the sunset progressed, and I realized there really is a simple compositional story here.

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Point Reyes Twilight, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

In the LCD, this twilight view of Point Reyes looked like grey mush. Probably the fault of the auto white balance setting. Back home, I adjusted the color temperature to make the scene look more like its natural colors, and multi-RAW processed the image for a painterly effect.

22mm (33mm in 35mm terms); 8 seconds at f/4 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.

Boathouse, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is the ground floor of the Coastguard Boathouse on the western tip of Point Reyes. I’ll be giving a night photography workshop in this building in a couple of weeks. We’ll eat our meals looking at this boat. I hope the weather cooperates for good night photography!

Windswept Shore, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Briefly noted: On Drakes Beach a ferocious wind blew through the gap in the bluffs out to sea. In the wind, the sand scoured across the beach. I was a bit reluctant to take my camera out, but (surprisingly) the “sand storm” was all low lying—within a foot of the ground. So I could stand with the blowing sand swirling around my knees and photograph without risking my lens.

Other Drakes Bay wave photos: Patterns of Design; Surf; and Wave Tangent. Also check out Mountains on the Beach.

Night View of Bodega Bay, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This view is looking north out from the tip of Point Reyes across Bodega Bay. This is a storm-bound, windswept coast, often shrouded in fog, so I was lucky to get clear skies for the star trails.

I exposed the photos used in this stack using my backup camera, a Nikon D200, while I photographed Point Reyes Lighthouse (Edge of Night) with my other camera (a D300). I had two tripods with me, but this one was kind of minature so I had to wedge it into the gap between a sign and the fence.

Compared to the D300, the D200 sensor seems to really heat up, which is where the purple flares come from. I kind of like them. Here’s another example showing the D200 sensor flaring, these star circles are from Yosemite at night.

[Nikon D300, 12-24mm zoom lans at 12mm (18mm in 35mm terms), 12 exposures each at 4 minutes, f/4, and ISO 100, total exposure time about 48 minutes, stacked in Photoshop using the Statistics action, tripod mounted using a minature tripod wedged between a National Park Service sign and a safety fence.]

Edge of Night, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Against the backdrop of pounding surf and a light mist on the ocean, I photographed star trails behind Point Reyes Lighthouse in this portrait of the edge of night.

Related image: Night at Point Reyes Lighthouse.

[Nikon D300, 10.5mm digital fisheye, foreground 10 minutes at f/2.8 and ISO 100, background 13 stacked exposures at 4 minutes and f/4 and ISO 100, total capture time about one hour, tripod mounted.]

Curvature, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Briefly noted: A brisk, cold wind blew as the sun set over the Pacific. Mark and I were perched on the edge of a crumbling cliff. As the light of sunset burnished the Pacific edge of Point Reyes, I hurried to make a few exposures, hoping the wind wouldn’t blow over my tripod, or blow me over the cliff (Mark’s tripod did get blown over).

[Nikon D300, 18-200 VR zomm lens at 18mm (27mm in 35mm terms), circular polarizer, 1/4 of a second at f/13 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Between Earth and Sky, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

On our way home from a sunset-to-night hike on the Tomales Point fork of Point Reyes, Mark and I stopped at the wreck of the Point Reyes fishing trawler. Many people like to photograph this trawler, which is easily accessible outside of Inverness, California.

The week before, at my Point Reyes night photography workshop, I’d been stymied in my idea of stacking photos to produce circular star trails (stymied because it was cloudy). But this time it was clear. The stars were bright, although a little less than on Tomales Point, probably because of the ambient light pollution.

I pointed the camera north, and used a digital fisheye lens to maximize the celestial rotation of the star trails.

First I tested the light with a one minute exposure at ISO 800 at f/3.5. Then I made an eight minute ISO 100 exposure (with in-camera long exposure noise reduction enabled) for the foreground. This image in its entirety is found below (I think it is interesting in its own right, with the still stars at the center and circular star trails around the edges).

Next, I turned noise reduction off, and programmed my Nikon MC-36 remote for twenty exposures, each capture at four minutes, ISO 100, and f/5.6.

It was damp and a bit chilly in the dark, and for a while Mark and I left my camera on autopilot and sat some distance away in my car, listening to the superb and eerie music of Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. After twelve exposures (about 48 minutes) our patience wore out and weariness won. Mark had a plane to catch in the morning for a business meeting, and I’ve been going on fumes since Katie Rose was born. I stopped the automated exposure process, and packed it in.

This morning, I combined the thirteen images in Photoshop using the Statistics script, choosing Maximum as the method for combination. An airplane trail in one of the captures made it into the stack, and I decided to keep this apparent visual anomaly. Finally, I layered in the longer exposure for the detail in the foreground and boat.

[Above: Thirteen captures, all captures Nikon D300, 10.5mm digital fisheye, tripod mounted; one capture 8 minutes at f/3.5 and ISO 100; twelve captures 4 minutes at f/5.6 and ISO 100; star trails created by statistical stacking of 13 exposures; foreground created by layer with the 8 minute exposure using a gradient and layer mask. Below: Nikon D300, 10.5mm digital fisheye, 8 minutes at f/3.5 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

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Foggy Sea, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

What happens when you point a camera out to sea in the fog in an almost pitch-black night?

Taken at Limantour Beach during my recent Point Reyes night photography workshop.

[Nikon D300, 18-200VR zoom lens at 18mm (27mm in 35mm terms), 241 seconds at f/3.5 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Point Reyes Trawler, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Even though thick fog blanketed the night skies, I think the night photography workshop I taught this past weekend on Point Reyes was a success. The weather, of course, is not a tame lion—and I was amazed at the creative responses to the weather conditions, the talent of the workshop participants, and that no two photographers came up with the same image, even when photographing in near proximity. What a great group of people!

On Saturday evening we went to photograph the Point Reyes trawler behind the Inverness general store. I was hoping for another shot of the star trails around Polaris by pointing my camera directly at due north behind the boat (this time I would have tried statistical stacking as in Night Vortex). But obviously the cloud cover ruled out star trails.

David, who helped us experiment with light painting at a previous night photo workshop, crawled onto the trawler. The assembled photographers shouted directions and encouragements as he light painted the interior of the boat cabin.

Next day, I was pleased and surprised at the level of interest in post-processing these photos. I used this image as a case study. The original RAW file was dark with a left-side histogram that indicated underexposure. A common reponse: “You got this image from…that!” Of course, to see the original and the way I processed it, you needed to be at the workshop.

[Nikon D300, 12-24mm zoom lens at 12mm (18mm in 35mm terms), 100 seconds at f/5.6 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Clouds, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

My idea was to hike down to the northeastern end of Drakes Beach, and see if I could make my way to the spot where Drakes Estero flows into the ocean. This took some bushwacking, but I did figure out how to get there. On the way, I found this platform of rock above a placid, reflecting tidal flat.

I used a circular polarizing filter to enhance the reflections.

[Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 18mm (27mm in 35mm terms) with polarizer, 25 seconds at f/5.6 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Tree Skeletons, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

In 1995 the Vision Fire burned more than 12,000 acres of Point Reyes National Seashore. Fierce Santa Ana winds blew the resulting smoke plume a thousand miles out sea (here’s a satellte photo of the plume).

Today, thirteen years later, the burnt trees stand like sentinels against the sky while new growth has sprung up all around. This year, alas, the poison oak is particularly thick in the clearings.

[Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR lens at 22mm (33mm in 35mm terms) with image stabilization turned off, three exposures between 2/5 of a second and 4 seconds at f/25 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Star Circles 2, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is my second forty minute exposure of stars circling over the Point Reyes the other night. The original version was horizontal. As this exposure progressed, low-flying clouds were sweeping across the sky, softening and darkening the scene. At the extreme left of the photo, a working boat on Tomales Bay flooded the scene with light. Time passed.

On a technical note, it’s pretty tough to accurately gauge exposures from the LCD at night because the display compensates. It might look decent on the screen, and still be four stops underexposed. So the exposure histogram is a better way to tell if your exposure is in the ball park. It’s unrealistic at night to expect nice, bell-shaped histograms in the middle of the range. But if your histogram is totally clumped on the left, you have a problem.

I glanced at the histogram for the previous exposure, and lightened things up a bit, moving from f/13 to f/10. Had I known the scene would darken as much as it did (because of the clouds), I would have opened it up at least another full f-stop.

[Nikon D300, 12-24mm zoom lens at 12mm (18mm in 35mm terms), 2,407 seconds (about 40 minutes) at f/10 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Star Circles, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Two thousand four hundred seconds, about forty minutes. Actually longer, maybe three thousand five hundred seconds, or close to an hour, when you add in-camera noise reduction.

I have mixed emotions when it comes to exposures that take this long. You don’t get many cracks at getting the exposure right. For one thing, each exposure drains a battery. Conditions change, and the night is only so long. Someone (or something like a car, boat, or plane) might shine a light in the direction of the camera. In the end, the LCD display is unreliable (it overcompensates for lousy exposures), so you can’t judge very well in the field (the exposure histogram gives better information).

So making these captures I feel every inch the heroic photographer in the tradition of the pioneers who made their subjects hold still for hours during an exposure (and then waited days for the wet plates to dry!). Of course, I also feel like a klutz when the exposure doesn’t come out, or the visual concept doesn’t hold up in the actual image.

On a more human element, I am measuring time as it passes. Sometimes I pace, sometimes I stand still. I try sitting or lying down, but the ground is too damp and cold. Each second can seem like eternity. There are thousands of seconds weighing me down.

I’m bundled against the wind and moisture in wool layers, poly piling, down, with a balaclava pulled down over my head. Is this water drop slow torture, or is it sublime as my city sensibility gradually clears, and I observe the night, forced to take the time to see things that are a cipher to most folk.

Other Star Trawler images: Big Dipper; Pole Star; The Long and Short; Star Trawler.

[Nikon D300, 12-24mm zoom lens at 12mm (18mm in 35mm terms), 2,407 seconds (about 40 minutes) at f/13 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]