Night Photography Assignment

UPDATE!!!
In case you already read this today, I wanted to add a link to my sister-in-law's night picture. It's incredible! Here's the link.

For the night photography assignment, I wanted to show you how to take a picture where the headlights on a car look like long neon lights and the car kind of disappears. Here's the picture:

The key to getting this type of picture is to use a slow shutter speed. In this example, I was shooting at 1 second. Because of the slow shutter speed, you will need to use a tripod in order for your shot to be in focus. The car disappears because it's moving while the shutter is open for that long and the light from the headlights is hitting your sensor for the entire second so it gets stretched out. Try it tonight and see if you can pull off the same shot.

Next week's assignment:

-- Bubbles --

This week's assignment is "Bubbles", a fun frothy assignment to take us through the change of seasons. It's definitely a more wide open subject than you might think. Consider using them for or in portraits, reflections, and macros.

Drag The Shutter

Have you ever heard a photog say "drag the shutter"? It's a phrase used often when we are using flash. The simple definition of the phrase is to choose a slow shutter speed such as anything less than 1/30 of a second.

So the question is, why would you want to "drag the shutter". When choosing a slower shutter speed while using flash, you will allow more ambient light into your picture. You can also show motion with blur by having such a long shutter speed while keeping your subject sharp because the flash freezes your subject.

It's important to remember:

When using flash, your shutter speed controls the exposure of your background (slower shutter speed = a brighter background and a slower shutter speed = a darker background). Your aperture controls the power of your flash and the exposure of your subject (the bigger the aperture, the less flash power and darker your subject will be).

Here's a picture I took at a reception where I used this "drag the shutter" method. I wanted to bring in the ambient light instead of making everything but the subject black because the colorful lights being used by the DJ added to the picture. I also wanted to show some motion blur which was accomplished with the slower shutter speed.



Make sure you practice this technique as it will take a little time to fully understand it.