When does the “Decisive Moment” Happen?
Many great photographs were made in this manner, though not out of sheer luck. Usually, they’re pre-composed, i.e. the photographer was ready and waiting for the magic to happen. Whether a breaching whale or a baby staring directly at the camera, once you miss that fleeting moment, it’s gone forever. So important was the idea of the “Decisive Moment” that the great street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson wrote an entire book describing it!

Anatomy of the “Jaws” Image
Note the determined look on the man’s face, which is not incongruous with the background image painted on the wall of the building. You’ll agree that this juxtaposition makes the photograph. Was it planned? Not at all. But I had to be ready for it if it happened! Therefore, for this kind of street photography to be a success, there’s obviously more involved than just being in the right place at the right time. You need to pick a location, a background or setting with which to work. Then you hope something magical happens.

I choose this mural and shot several images as people passed by. I got lucky with this particular guy, who looks so determined and in a hurry. The fact that his jaw resembles that of the mural skull was an added bonus! I shot the image from my car window with a Canon Rebel XT DSLR with a 28-135mm lens zoomed all the way out. The photo is uncropped. I decided ahead of time that I wanted the mural in focus rather than the passersby, since I didn’t necessarily want the people to be recognizable. Therefore I switched the lens to manual focus and preset it for the mural. (The fact that I was using a zoom forced me to use critical focusing, as a long zoom’s depth of field can be very shallow.) To further blur the person, I used a relatively slow shutter speed, 1/30 second.

Now, you can try just the opposite in your own experimentation with such photojournalistic street photography. Pre-focus on something closer in order to get the passersby crisp, which will cause the background to blur (assuming you’re using a zoom). Either is acceptable. If you’re shooting close to your subject (a la Gary Winogrand), perhaps you can just shoot with a wide angle lens. This way, everything from maybe four feet to infinity will be in focus.

Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, and Brassai
Many great photographs were made by pre-composing a scene, then shooting at the decisive moment. For further illustration (and much better examples of the genre than I can provide), please see the works of master photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, and Brassai. As you look at their imagery, notice how much of the composition is provided by the background, as opposed to the supposed “subject.” Realize that a true artistic composition is just that, a whole composed of lesser parts. Would my photo of the walking man be of any interest at all if not for the background? Would the background hold its own as a still life? Probably not.

Finding Your Own Way To Shooting the “Decisive Moment”
The photographers mentioned above are famous for capturing street scenes in imaginative and highly artistic ways. Studying their work can help add a new dimension to your own photography.

Realize that while emulation may be a sincere form of praise, people who practice specific techniques (as these folks do a la Cartier-Bresson) may achieve sadly derivative results. It’s really best to study the masters then find your own way. It’s been said that photography is like writing. Everybody can do it, but almost nobody should. If you want something more than a snapshot, concentrate on composition. You’ll also notice that very few of the examples I’ve shown are in color. That’s because black and white adds artistic abstraction to almost any image; color tends to make almost everything look snapshoddy.

Practice with your Digital Camera

You can shoot weddings with your point-and-shoot digital camera, but you should really practice ahead of time. Take pictures of your friends, and get good at being quick-on-the-draw. The action at weddings (and especially receptions) happens quickly and you need to be ready. You can easily miss that once-in-a-lifetime moment if you’re busy fumbling trying to get the red-eye reduction to turn off (and just flash, darn it!). This happened to a friend of mine who missed the moment his son was handed his high school diploma on stage! So if you don’t agree with author Salman Rushdie that it cleanses the soul to accept defeat, better learn how to use that camera!

Positioning yourself for the Optimal Photograph

A key element in getting a great photo is timing. Whether you want candid or posed photos, the advantage is yours if you know ahead of time what events will take place and when. You can then physically position yourself for a good shot of people walking down the aisle, cutting the cake, etc. It’s also good practice to realize that there may be solemn moments (signing the katubah, exchanging vows) when you should keep your camera off! Many times the professional wedding photographer will reenact certain scenes with the participants after the ceremony. This is a great time for the novice photographer to hang out, get some photos, and learn a few things about positioning, lighting, and the equipment involved in the real deal.

Lighting

No camera is smart enough to take great pictures under all conditions. All automatic cameras take great photos outdoors in the bright sunlight. The wheels fall off when the light becomes more challenging, i.e., when it is relatively dim, like in a church or synagogue. That being the case, you must decide whether you want to use flash or make available-light photographs. Flash is best for natural-looking illumination and stopping action, but it may be a no-no during the ceremony. You should check with the celebrants beforehand. Available-light photography demands high light sensitivity (camera with ISO settings upwards of 1600) and white balance control. Most cameras can adjust white balance for fluorescent or tungsten light (to avoid the respective greenish and orangey hues).

Most digital point-and-shoots have a high ISO limit of 400. Also, these cameras tend to produce noisy mottled images at high ISO settings. Here’s an example of an available-light photo made with a point-and-shoot camera. Just not sensitive enough to bring out much detail in this dimly-lit scene at left. You could do some work on it in a photo-editing program and make it look better (at right), but do you really want to be bothered with all that post-processing work?

What kind of camera is best for wedding photography?

A digital SLR would be best because of its high ISO (light sensitivity of 1600 or 3200), and better image quality at high ISO settings. The drawback with a DSLR is that you can’t really have much more than what amounts to maybe a X4 zoom. Still, some form of image stabilization is preferred. Point-and-shoot cameras boast X10 zooms, but as you’ll see, there are drawbacks.

Zoom in for detail!
Everyone loves to do this since we can’t always be where the action is. However, a X10 zoom requires some sort of image stabilization in the camera. Otherwise, your available-light images can easily be blurred. You’ll always get a better shot if you just walk right up to the person or object and shoot without using the zoom.

Catching the Action at Weddings
Under available light, you’re much better off with a DSLR. At a high ISO setting, you can shoot with aperture wide open and relatively fast shutter speed, say 1/125 second. If you can use flash, point-and-shoots work fine, providing you know how to use the different flash modes. One way to make the most of the “walking down the aisle” action is to shoot the procession head-on. Motion is stopped much easier if the person is walking toward you than across your field of vision.

Outdoor Wedding Photography

In the spring and summer, there’s generally lots of sunlight, so the amateur wedding photographer is in much better shape lighting-wise. Still, there are a few things to keep in mind– unless you’re in the open sunlight, whites will look blue in the shade, and you may still need to shoot at as high an ISO. Also, as you can see that this photo (w10) would have been better if some fill-flash had been used. Post-wedding photos are often shot outdoors in some park. While the professional wedding photographer is positioning people and shooting away, feel free to shoot the scenes from behind the pro. That person is doing a lot of the work for you, but do stay out of the way—someone’s paying the photographer a lot of money by the hour!

In Summary

Don’t be shy or self-conscious about taking pictures at a wedding. Everyone expects to be photographed!

The Mid-sized Digital Camera

First of all, consider buying a mid-sized fixed-lens camera like the Olympus SP-560UZ 8MP or the Canon Powershot G9. The former is built like a half-size SLR; the latter like an overgrown pocket camera. Both can be used as point-and-shoots, while delivering photo quality far superior to most smaller pocket cameras. While you will most certainly get better results with a DSLR (e.g. the Nikon D40 ), once you connect a good (but bulky) lens to it, you’re lugging around al of weight. The problem with most small and cheap pocket cameras? Picture quality stinks and they’re usually not smart enough to give you good results under poor lighting conditions. The mid-sized cameras above are very high quality and have both have long image-stabilized zooms.

Basic Rules

Shoot with the sun at your back. This illuminates the subject. Otherwise, you get a silouette!

Shoot at the edges of the day. Early morning and late afternoon provide the most dramatic lighting and colors.

Know how to use the flash modes on your camera correctly. There’s nothing worse than missing your shot because you were in red-eye mode when you didn’t need to be!

Minimize distraction in your photos, especially when it comes to background.

Make your photos interesting by zooming in for detail or shooting at an odd angle (like the panorama beach scene of the happy family above). Otherwise your photos will just look like typical postcards.

Shooting a sunrise or sunset? Bracket your exposures. Set your +/-EV or Av a couple steps to the “-“ side. This will keep the bright sun from washing out your photo.

Trying to photograph someone against that sunset? Shoot with fill flash to light the foreground subject while keeping the sunset properly exposed.

Creativity

One of the best things about going away, anywhere, is that the new locale can spark creativity. Simply being in a new place makes things look more interesting than what you’re used to!

Shooting Scenery

Landscapes are generally shot horizontally, while most other images pack a bigger punch when shot vertically.

Shooting People

Practice not chopping off their heads (unless your intent is to protect their privacy!).

If shooting groups of people, make sure your camera has a wide enough angle lens to get everything in.

Although it’s tempting to photograph the native people, be respectful of their privacy.

Shooting Yourself

Want a shot of your family in front of that landmark? Don’t be so quick to hand your camera to a stranger. You might consider using the self-timer (or invest in an IR remote) so you can set up the camera up a few yards away, then get yourself back in the picture.

Speaking of Safety…

When getting off a subway train, keep the camera out of sight. A friend of mine had her camera strap cut and camera stolen just as she got off the train! Door closed, away went the camera. In fact, I had my first digital camera stolen at an outdoor rock concert. Had it hanging from my shoulder; next thing I knew, there it wasn’t!

The alien life form the girl is holding happens to be an Egyptian hairless cat (a breed made popular as “Mr. Bigglesworth,” Austin Powers’ cat). I happened to walk into a pet supply shop last summer (which will forever puzzle historians, as I do not own a pet) and saw this creature slinking around (the cat, that is, not the girl). Amber, an employee, offered to hold the cat so I could get a photo. Always carry your camera—you never know when an opportunity might present itself! We went outside in the sunlight so I could use a slow ISO for a sharper image. The image was captured with a Canon Rebel XT armed with a Canon image stabilized 28 – 135 mm zoom.

Why Pet Photography is Easy

• For the most part, animals don’t require model releases.

• We don’t perceive them to have a “good” side, like people do.

• Most pets are cute, and therefore photogenic. Try to catch them doing something cute (like this chihuahua drinking water), and the cuteness factor increases exponentially.

• Unusual pets make for unusual photographs. Imagine my surprise when I saw this cockatoo sitting on the side view mirror of a pickup truck parked in a convenience store parking lot! Pet owners are usually quite proud of their pets and are often flattered when you ask to photograph them. You might possibly offer to email the owner a copy of the photo as a JPEG as a gesture of good will. Many owners like to have photos of their pets.

Why Pet Photography is Difficult

• Unless you’re photographing a well-trained beast with its human handler by its side, you’re not going to be able to control your subject very much. That’s why you need to know how to use your gear correctly and quickly. Animals move without much warning!

• Some pets may try to eat you. You might need to befriend the animal’s owner before you can get the photo you desire. Still, be careful—don’t poke the bear.

• If you’re after more than a snapshot, creating an artistic composition requires more skill. The image at left depicts a cat with sutures–post-cancer surgery—and its loving owner. When creating a black and white image, it helps to have a subject with varying contrast. This photo would have had nowhere near the impact had the cat been totally black. Dark haired or dark skinned animals are more challenging to photograph; lighting becomes critical for bringing out detail.

All the images you see here were captured with existing light. Flash and studio lighting are topics unto themselves.

Someone said to me today, “Must be easy shooting statues–they don’t move.” While it’s true that they are immobile, this doesn’t necessarily make them easier to photograph than a hockey game. The character of statuary can change (or be made to change) dramatically with lighting, the seasons, and weather conditions. In fact, if you’ve shot the same statue once before, consider the fact that weathering and erosion can give statuary a whole new appeal, as will the presence of snow and rain.

Photographing Statuary

How do I Start?
Find a statue that interests you. While public parks, museums, and cemeteries are all good venues, I’ll restrict my writing to outdoor statuary, as indoor photography has its own set of challenges (most of which involve lighting and security personnel). By the way, did you know that back in the mid-1800s, there were no parks or museums in America? Around this time, the garden cemetery as sculpture garden came into being. Public parks, galleries, and museums came about later, due to the immense popularity of the Victorian garden cemetery as tourist destination!

Can I photograph any old statue or monument?
Well, not if it’s on private property. Sneaking a shot can be titillating, but if you’re not allowed to display or publish it, your excursion may have been a fool’s errand! If the statue is in a public area, it’s probably okay to shoot it. Also, do no harm. Don’t climb on the statue—you don’t want to break something and be arrested for vandalism. In an old abandoned cemetery, you wouldn’t think it would make a hill of beans difference. But this is not your hill, and these are not your beans.

What kind of camera should I use?
An SLR (whether it be film or digital) gives you the most flexibility, although you can use any camera. The operative phrase is that you know how to use the camera!

Should I use color or black and white?
Hey, Paul Simon was wrong! Everything do not look worse in black and white! In fact, if you’re just shooting the statue, black and white can give you some very interesting and abstract effects. Use this if you want to create a mood or make an artistic statement. Use color if you’re shooting snapshots.

How do I compose a meaningful image?
Okay, now we’re getting to the meat of the article. Allow time to compose and photograph your subject. Pick a good time of day if possible—shooting with the sun behind you provides better direct light on the statue than when it is directly overhead. Shooting at the edges of the day also provides you with nice shadow accents. So now let’s look at the art of composition.

Composing a Photograph

Whether you’re photographing statuary for documentation purposes, creating new art, using the statue as a backdrop for a family vacation photo, or simply because you think it’s cool, you probably don’t want your photo to look snap-shoddy. The famous French photographer Eugene Atget is best known for his artistic documentation of public statuary, which to me is just a series of good snapshots. So, regardless of the type of photo you’re shooting, there are two basic things to consider: lighting and composition.

Lighting
If you happen on a statue, your creativity will be somewhat constrained by the current lighting. Good photographers can make anything work, as long as they know how to operate the camera. Front lighting is best (sun behind you, the photographer); though a backlit statue can be dealt with too. The Eros and Psyche statue was front lit, with background in shadow. I exposed for (took a light meter reading off) the bright surface of the white marble statue, which grossly underexposed the background. This is the effect I wanted, as the background detail was distracting.

For a backlit statue, you have a wider variety of options:

• Expose for the bright areas of the scene and transform the statue into silhouette. Using your camera in Auto mode will normally give you this effect if most of the scene is bright.

• You can also expose for the darker statue and wash out the brighter background, which is what I did with the statue of the two angels at right.

• Another option is to illuminate your subject with fill flash, which will keep the background properly exposed and the statue properly illuminated.

Composition
When we talk about composition, we often forget that the lighting itself is a major compositional element! Both studio lighting and available light can create all kinds of moods. With outdoor statuary, we play the cards we’re dealt–you see the statue on vacation, you have 5 minutes to shoot it. So it’s lit from the side, deal with it. While the absence of light may be the absence of truth, shadows allow the viewer more latitude for their imagination.

How do I compose a meaningful image?

That’s really less subjective than you might think! Here are a few compositional pointers that apply to both snapshots as well as artistic photography:

• If you want your photo to be pretty as a postcard, stand farther back (or use a wide angle lens) and get some of the surrounding scenery in the frame. This also helps give a sense of scale to the statue.

• If you want to capture detail of the statue, get in closer. While you can always crop or enlarge a photo later, you image is generally of better quality if you shoot your original image the way you want the final print to be.

• Meter off the statue as a starting point, then for different effects, increase or decrease exposure to your liking.

• I shoot in Aperture Priority mode mostly, as I want to control my depth of field.

• Use Image Stabilization. Why bother? The statue isn’t moving. Well, no, but you are. Also consider using a tripod and slow exposure if you want a deep depth of field.

• Pick one: Line up a vertical element of the scene with the vertical frame in your viewfinder, or line up a horizontal element of the scene with the horizontal frame in your viewfinder. Either one will give your image the appearance of being “level.”

Don’t be a Fair-weather Photographer

In conclusion, if your attempt at statuary photography was less than stellar, consider coming back to it at a different time of day or under different lighting/weather conditions. The most mundane statue can be magically transformed into a work of art during a snowstorm!

One of the only good reasons to have a digital camera with high resolution (5 megapixels and above) is so that you can digitally zoom in on an area of the image and not have that zoomed in portion become all choppy or noisy. The lower the resolution of the original, the worse the magnified area will be. Realize, too, that with most digital cameras, you can choose low, medium, or high resolution. Best to use the highest setting if you think you’ll want to enlarge or edit the images later on.

I made this original image of the bee and flowers with a Canon Digital Rebel XT DSLR equipped with a Canon 28 - 135 mm zoom, fully extended (135 mm). I was about 16 inches from the bee, and a bit frustrated that I could not get a more magnified image. I’d have preferred to get a much closer original shot of the bee since nothing takes the place of a high quality original image. This is the Holy Grail of photography–always do as much work as you can through the lens, because your ability to sharpen, saturate, or recompose an image becomes much more difficult after you’ve captured the image!

Now, getting macro shots of still flower petals is one thing, but a moving bee is a bit difficult to shoot! Even if I were able to zoom in much more, I’d be trying to follow the fast-moving bee all over the place, trying to recompose the scene while attempting to keep the rascal in focus. From this respect, its a better choice to pull back and shoot the wider scene with the intent of cropping/zooming a bit later on.

The caveat here is that you need two things to do this:

1. A hi-res original image and
2. Photo editing software

The Canon Rebel XT is an 8 megapixel camera, so it’s got enough resolution. I used Adobe Photoshop CS2 to crop and magnify the image. Oh, and one last thing–how many shots do you think I took before I got a keeper? Would you believe twenty-six? Sometimes a photographer gets lucky, but skill and persistence usually have a bigger payoff!

Concert shots look so easy when you see them in magazines, don’t they? Try to take one and you’ll see what the artist Georgia O’Keefe meant when she said, “The cliffs over there, you look at it and it’s almost painted for you, you think until you try.”

If you walk away from this article with one thing let it be this: Cameras need light in order to record an image. The less light there is, the more difficult time the camera will have.

Getting a good concert shot is all about the lighting.

However, you must choose between flash and available light. Let’s explore both.

Flash photography at a concert

Let’s start by bursting your bubble: Even though using flash is the easier way to get the shot, there are a couple drawbacks:

• It may not be allowed in the room
• It destroys the mood created by all the stage lighting

Flash is good for freezing action, however. Most cameras automatically set a relatively fast shutter speed (perhaps 1/200 second) in flash mode.

Available light photography at a concert

Ok, first we must realize that most good published performance photographs are shot with available light. It captures the mood, and often the drama of the performance. Secondly we must realize that it is not that easy to make a successful concert photograph. However, here are a few pointers:

Try a test shot with your camera in auto mode.

You might get lucky. You can also try setting your camera for “theatre” or “party” mode, but chances are you’ll just get something that looks like this blurred orangy shot of Shonen Knife’s bass player. If your camera’s auto modes don’t magically give you what you want, you’ve got to go to the next level and start thinking about what you’re doing. The following steps are basic, yet very important for existing light photography.

• Use the highest ISO (light sensitivity) setting available on your camera.

For most digital point-and-shoots, this is ISO 400. For most DSLRs, this is 1600. The DSLR’s image sensor is much more light sensitive (can capture an image in dim light) that that of a digital point-and-shoot.

• Aperture wide — spotlights aren’t enough !
  

While spotlights appear to illuminate the performers intensely, the light is relatively dim compared to daylight. Therefore, you probably want to shoot with your camera’s aperture set wide open, to let in as much light as possible. For a typical digital camera lens, this might be f3.5. To complicate matters, spotlights create such a dramatic difference in light intensity between the performer and the rest of your scene that most auto exposure cameras tend to average the exposure, which washes out the brightly lit performer.

The Solution: Crank your camera’s +/- Av or Ev setting down to -2 and see what happens. Make a few test exposures and adjust accordingly.

• Shutter Speed

See the blur of the bass player’s guitar? This is due to the fact that the shutter speed was relatively slow (perhaps 1/8 second)–either I, the bass player, or both moved during the exposure! An 1/8 second may be the fastest you can shoot under a particular available light setting.

The Solution: Study the performers and try to catch them when they’re least likely to be moving. This could be between songs or while they’re catching their breath between song verses. This is what I did to get the B/W shot at the top of this page. (You may notice that the top of this photo is sharper than the bottom–this is because I was shooting up, focused on the woman’s face. A wide aperture causes a shallow depth of field, meaning fewer things in the flight path will be in focus.)

• Activate your camera’s image stabilization

Most people can effectively hand hold a 50 mm lens at a shutter speed of about 1/50 second. Concert light shutter speeds can be much slower than this! You risk blurring the image if you use a shutter speed less than 1/50 second. Image stabilization might allow you to hand hold the same shot at slower speeds, say 1/30 or even 1/15 of a second, but doesn’t guarantee a sharp image.

The major advantage of digital cameras is that they shorten the learning curve by giving you instant feedback! You can see immediately (in the playback viewfinder) whether or not you captured the image successfully. The trick is to know how to adjust your camera’s settings to get the best shot!

What’s a Holga?

A Holga is a cheap Chinese plastic medium format film camera. Essentially, a toy! Yes, I did say FILM camera! Why review this decidedly lo-tech dinosaur? Well, simply put, the Holga lets you express your creativity in ways that digital does not allow. Shoot a roll of color slide film and then have your photo processing people cross-process it as if it were negative film (For Kodak and similar films, that would be C-41 instead of the proper E-6). Check out my Holga shots here and see what you think!

Why would I want a Holga?
Three reasons: they’re cheap, fun, and outta control!

1. $25 new for the basic model, $40 with flash.

2. Their inherent poor design and limited operator control adds so much mystery to the picture-taking process that it nearly turns the user into an instant artist! To some people, this is fun.

3. Good film can give you much better color saturation and resolution than you can get with most under-$300 digital cameras! You can buy medium format (120mm) film at most camera stores and have it processed there as well.

Tell me more about the Holga

Holgas were first marketed in 1982 as a way for photography students and photo enthusiasts to enjoy inexpensive access into the expensive world of medium format photography. While you can improve the quality of your results with a film camera by using better film, you can further improve the quality of your results by using a larger format. With digital, you don’t have the first option. All you can do if you want better picture quality is go up in format size, from point-and-shoot, to DSLR, to medium format. Bearing in mind that the typical prices of these digital options are $150, $1000, and $25,000 respectively, good film in a cheap camera becomes a very attractive way to get extremely hi-res images!

So I’ll get $25,000 results with a $25 Holga?
Of course not. But check out the images in this book to get an idea of just what the Holga can do!

Why bother with film, when we have digital?

Holga cameras are simply quirky and fun, harkening back to the days of film when we couldn’t instantly see our result. Film lends an element of tentativeness, or mystery and waiting, to see if “the picture came out.” Holgas are so popular in fact that a company calledn Lensbabies markets $100+ lens attachments to make your digital camera produce distorted Holga-style images!

When considering a Holga camera, there are a few things to think about:
I’ve arrived at these points after having used two different Holgas (one with flash, the other without) for a few years now. In my opinion, these are the camera’s high and low points:

The Good

• Photos on a sunny beach look amazing.
• No batteries! This is a fully manual camera except for the flash, which needs a few AA batts.
• Simple controls—one shutter speed (about 1/100 second), flash activation, 2 aperture settings (in theory), B N switch (Bulb, which keeps shutter open as long as you hold the lever down; and Normal, which trips the spring-loaded shutter)
• For best results, shoot slow film (ISO 100) in bright sun, fast film (ISO 400) in the shade and indoors with flash.

The Bad

• The ridiculous carrying strap attached to the slider mechanism that holds the back on the camera. Try carrying it by the strap and (though it’s very light) the weight of the camera pulls the slider up, the camera drops to the ground and your film falls out! Talk about light leaks…But I guess that’s why they give you a roll of black vinyl electrical tape with the camera—to tape it shut. To avoid a sticky mess (like mine), a friend puts a heavy rubber band around her Holga, which keeps the back from popping off. Ingenious!
• The Sun/Shade switch, which presumably changes the aperture, does nothing. This is not my usual exaggeration—you can look inside the camera with the back removed—it does nothing!
• Most flash photos look less than stellar.
• If you forget to manually wind the film to the next frame, you can easily make a double exposure (for me, this is bad, for someone else, it may be good!)

Conclusion
Want a fully automated camera? Buy a digital point-and-shoot. Want a quirky cumbersome dinosaur of a camera that produces fun, amusing, and even thrilling distorted images? Then the Holga is for you!

Read more about the camera’s history here. If you’re digitally-bred and don’t know beans about film cameras, here’s a link to the operating instructions that come with the Holga 120.

Happy Holidays! Christmas lights are very tempting to us photographers, aren’t they? Unless you have a “Xmas Lights” setting on your digital point-and-shoot, how are you going to make a photo like this?

First of all, you need to find a photo-worthy scene. This image was shot in Love Park (in front of City Hall) in Philadelphia. The Robert Indiana “Love” sculpture is a favorite destination photo site for tourists. Each year when they put up the 50-foot decorated tree behind it, the whole scene bursts into life! That is, at night. During the day it’s kind of mediocre. So how to photograph it at night?

Night Shooting with a Digital Camera

Try a test shot with your camera in auto mode. You might get lucky. Chances are, though, you’ll get something that looks like one of these:

Photo on Left: Too light. Camera’s auto exposure system set exposure for the scene’s average light intensity. This brings out shadow detail while burning out the highlights. How do you fix this? If you want to use the camera in auto mode, find the Ev or Av setting and drop it down to maybe -2 stops. Experiment with tricking the camera this way until you get the results you like.

Photo on Right: Too light and blurred. Same problem with the Ev/Av setting, but in addition, the camera moved during the exposure. How do you fix this? Find something to brace the camera on. A tripod works best, a friend less so. The exposure will likely be long (half a second or more), regardless of what fancy mode you use. Why? Because there just isn’t enough light! Activate your anti-shake or vibration reduction as well, but this is of marginal use in such low light conditions.

Cameras operate on the principle of light hitting some sort of light-sensitive recording medium, be it film or a digital image sensor. Light is key to this process. The less light you have, the more difficult a time the camera will have recording an image. Any camera can take a great picture on a sunny day at the beach. Most need some help from the user when shooting in less than optimal conditions.

Here are some general pointers for shooting Christmas lights:

1. Set the camera’s light sensitivity as high as possible. In most cases, this will be ISO 400 for digital point-and-shoots, ISO 1600 for DSLRs. The DSLR has the advantage here–its image sensor is just much faster, and therefore more light sensitive. DSLR images will be sharper and less noisy.

2. Use a tripod or other solid object on which to brace the camera, as the exposure will likely be long. Most people can effectively hand hold a 50 mm lens at a shutter speed of about 1/50 second. Xmas light shutter speeds can be much slower than this! You risk blurring the image if you use a shutter speed less than 1/50 second. Image stabilization might allow you to hand hold the same shot at slower speeds, say 1/30 or even 1/15 of a second, but it in no way guarantees a sharp image!

3. Turn your flash off.

4. Crank your +/-Ev or Av setting down to -2 stops in order to record only the bright lights, and not the shadow detail of the scene. Bump it up a little if the image is too dark.

The super cool thing about digital cameras is the instant feedback you get! You can see immediately (in the playback viewfinder) whether or not you captured the image successfully. The trick is to know how to adjust your camera’s settings when necessary!

Black and white? Who would ever want to photograph a richly colored Autumn leaf in black and white? (That’s a rhetorical question). There was something about the way this wet maple looked the other morning on the hood of my car that just screamed “Monochrome!”

For this photo, I used a Canon Rebel XT with a Canon 28-135 mm lens fully extended in manual focus, macro setting. Macro is tough to do with most DSLRs–they’re big and bulky compared to digital point-and-shoots. (Between you, me, and the lamp post, macro shots are far easier to get with a point-and-shoot!) Regardless of what camera you use, when your focusing distance is mere inches, focus becomes critical because depth of field becomes so shallow. Getting this just right without a tripod can be challenging. (They do sell, by the way, miniature tripods for just this purpose!)

THE TAO OF BLACK AND WHITE:

Shooting black and white forces you to “see” in monochrome, i.e., to visualize the scene sans color. In this scene, I “saw” the water as dark drops of luminescent, mercurial moisture on a white canvas. To me the scene looked far more interesting this way that it would have as a simple snap-shoddy color picture.

If you think “color” when you think “nature,” then think “Ansel Adams” instead. You get an entirely new perspective when you visualize everyday objects as abstract shapes and tones instead of the familiar colorful objects they are. Seem difficult? Too complicated? Not so. It’s actually easier to make a successful black and white photograph than it is to make a color one. In other words, BW is more about a visual idea than a literal one. No one can tell you the colors are off or its out of focus–a BW photographer can always get away with saying: “I meant for it to be that way.” Do that with color, and it just looks like a bad photo!

In all candor, color photography is too much like television—it leaves nothing to the imagination. Think about the cinematography of old black and white movies. They were truly more artistic than color movies. One had to pay very close attention to contrast and form to visually create drama. That said, some people prefer color to black and white. Is one better than the other? Is one Autumn leaf better than the other? Not really–it’s simply a personal artistic preference.

LEARN MORE ABOUT BLACK AND WHITE!

There’s a book I like that I’d recommend if you want to get an idea of the range of possibilities available with black and white photography. Its called “Black & White Camera Craft” by William Cheung. It was published in 2003, and deals mainly with film, not digital. But this is okay, since as I said, we’re only concerned with the possibilities of black and white. In 2004, Cheung published another book called “Switch to Digital,” which is an interesting account of one photographer’s conversion experience. However, the main reason I bring both books to your attention is for you to see the difference between digital and film BW photography. The purpose of most photo editing software is to help recreate in digital certain film effects we’re used to seeing, e.g. dodging, burning, and adding a grainy texture. Click here to go to my Flickr site, which has many examples of black and white photography!