When

Weather per­mit­ting — always a con­sid­er­a­tion in Half Moon Bay — I am invit­ing cam­era folk to join me in pho­tograph­ing the near full moon ris­ing behind the John­ston House on Thurs­day, August 30. I plan to be setup by 7:00pm and expect the moon to appear by 7:25 and the sun set­ting at 7:40.

Where

The Photographer’s Ephemeris tells me to be near the inter­sec­tion of Main Street and Hig­gins Canyon Road look­ing east toward the house.

Cam­era Tips

The moon is no larger on the hori­zon than it is when directly over­head. In order to increase the per­ceived size of the moon, you pho­to­graph it along side a land­mark, from a dis­tance and with a long lens, zoom­ing in as much as you can to frame the pic­ture. I have a 70-300mm lens but will be using my 70-200mm instead. It is a higher qual­ity lens that gives me sharper pic­tures. More megapix­els in your cam­era helps when crop­ping to retain a high res­o­lu­tion pho­to­graph. I use a Nikon D7000 with 16MP but have taken decent pho­tos with the 10MP D80.

Expo­sure

Expo­sure is a bit tricky. You might think that an evening shot would require a wider aper­ture or a slower shut­ter speed, but the moon can be very bright in a dark sky and to retain crater detail, an under exposed pic­ture (accord­ing to the camera’s light meter) might be best.

The pic­ture below was taken with the D80 and the 70-300mm lens at 100 ISO, f/8.0 aper­ture and 1/50 shut­ter speed. The orig­i­nal pic­ture was both under exposed for the house and hills and a bit over­ex­posed for the moon and the sky. I then, using Light­room,  light­ened the bot­tom half and dark­ened the sky which brought out details in both. Bracketing your expo­sure and lay­er­ing via HDR should improve that process.

A near full moon ris­ing behind the John­ston House, Half Moon Bay, CA

Some folks sug­gest start­ing at f/16 with a shut­ter speed equal to your ISO set­ting. Those are fast shut­ter speeds, but use a tri­pod any­way. And be ready to man­u­ally adjust your set­tings, as the moon rises quickly. In the bay area, the earth is spin­ning around 818 mph which give you only a few min­utes to catch a shot like this.

But the Full Moon is on Friday

It sure is. Those pesky moun­tains block our view of the hori­zon and, in this case, the moon doesn’t appear until 26 min­utes after the actual rise. Since the sun sets as the moon rises, by the time we see it, the sun is long gone. By shoot­ing the day before the full­ness, you can get some of that golden hour sun­set light on the John­ston House and less extreme con­trast in your exposure.

Update: Local SF and noc­tur­nal pho­tog­ra­pher Phil McGrew sug­gests the “Lunar 11″ rule. Start with an f stop of 11 and a shut­ter speed the same as your ISO set­ting, sim­i­lar to the “Sunny 16″ rule which is to start with f/16 and shut­ter speed the same as your ISO when in a very sunny environment.

Update 2: Despite per­fectly clear evenings the pre­vi­ous 2 nights, the marine layer blan­keted the coast with low lying clouds and we saw nei­ther the blue moon rise or the sun set. Next month is another story when, on Sep­tem­ber 29, full moon rises 24 min­utes before the sun­sets and may be the best photo op here in Half Moon Bay.

We took our Light Doo­dles Photo Booth to the Treat Social Club last night and had a great response to the por­traits ses­sion. The peo­ple were fan­tas­tic, the music was stel­lar and the light show amazing.

I did get some time to talk with the video direc­tor for some cool insights to the soft­ware used. I built a slideshow of our light draw­ings which included sev­eral tango themed pic­tures which seemed to dis­play just as the accor­dion played and the dancers were tan­go­ing. And then a yel­low giraffe head would pop up. Very trippy. Here are a few shots.

My shot of a light painted Lori on trom­bone became the default image for the evening

Visit the Light Doo­dles web site or see the full por­trait gallery here.

Our Light Doo­dles photo booth will be cre­at­ing col­or­ful por­traits at the Treat Social Club tonight, Tues­day, August 21. It appears to be a mul­ti­me­dia extrav­a­ganza that occurs once a month and we are excited to be invited. Tonight fea­tures Tango music and dancers and new music by Sascha Jacob­sen, Adam Theis and Eric Gar­land, plus other spe­cial guests and film pro­duc­ers. Come back tomor­row to view the results!

For those of us who like to sleep late, July through Sep­tem­ber are the best times to find and pho­to­graph the Milky Way and the SF bay area based Star Cir­cle Acad­emy can help you. Look to the south­ern sky from just after sun­set to mid­night this time of year.

Depend­ing where you are, just look­ing might not be quite enough. Noc­tur­nal pho­tog­ra­pher Steven Chris­ten­son has posted 2 help­ful arti­cles on the Star Cir­cle Acad­emy blog on the sub­ject of find­ing and pho­tograph­ing the expanse that is our home galaxy and is happy to answer ques­tions in the comments.

The Elu­sive Milky Way – How to Find It!

The Elu­sive Milky Way – Cap­ture an Image

I have yet to cap­ture a Milky Way photo I want to share, so I link to one of Steven’s below.

If the pic­ture looks a bit strange, it is a 180 degree ver­torama (a series of stitched pic­tures) taken straight over­head from hori­zon to hori­zon. The west hori­zon is at the top of the photo.

Build­ing a cool new por­trait photo business.

Stay tuned…

Light painted por­traits are coming

This site is all things me which, these days, is mainly pho­tog­ra­phy. I have imported my old neglected blog, I am start­ing a new por­trait busi­ness and I will con­tinue to teach and post.

There is plenty to pho­to­graph and write about. The owls are liv­ing large, light draw­ing is look­ing bright and I offer a new class in Sep­tem­ber, Adobe Light­room 4.

Shorter posts, more often with more pic­tures are the plan. Here is a pic­ture now.

I believe this is a Aqui­le­gia flavescens, yel­low columbine which I pho­tographed along side Lake Sab­rina, high in the Sierra Moun­tains above Bishop, CA in the Inyo National For­est.

If you do noth­ing else today, watch this video and visit the asso­ci­ated web sites that tell the story of Vivian Maier. This is the most inspir­ing arti­cle on pho­tog­ra­phy I have seen in a long time. Go full screen.

John Maloof’s site — http://vivianmaierphotography.wordpress.com/

Chicago Mag­a­zine article

Tripods

You must own a tri­pod! That 3 legged sup­port struc­ture is one of the old­est tools known to mankind. They hold pots over a fire, were used in sac­ri­fi­cial cer­e­monies and sup­port machine guns in war time.

Now, tripods pro­vide portable sta­bil­ity and sharper images for a vari­ety of pho­to­graphic tech­niques. Long expo­sure pic­tures taken in low light that would blur if the cam­era moved can be sharp and vibrant with the sta­ble sup­port of a tri­pod. A tele­photo lens will amplify any cam­era move­ment and eas­ily blur your pic­ture. A tri­pod, and, in fact, any sta­ble sur­face, can help keep those pic­tures in focus.

Note: Nikon rec­om­mends that you turn off Vibra­tion Reduc­tion (VR) when using a tri­pod. VR starts a gyro­scope when you hold the shut­ter release down halfway that helps sta­bi­lize a hand held cam­era, but can induce move­ment and vibra­tion when the cam­era is sup­ported on a tri­pod, espe­cially when using a tele­photo lens.

But there are tips to improve the per­for­mance of any tri­pod. First, check the bot­tom of your cam­era. Most have the stan­dard size (1/4 inch, 20 threads per inch) screw socket, ready to attach to a stan­dard tri­pod. Cam­era mounted? Let’s go.

Keep your tri­pod short. Shorter is more sta­ble. I do not extend the legs any longer then I need to. And I only raise the cen­ter pole as a last resort!

Add weight. Since a heav­ier sup­port is more sta­ble, you can improve the per­for­mance of your inex­pen­sive tri­pod by hang­ing weight from the cen­ter. Some tripods include a hook at the bot­tom of the cen­ter pole. I carry a bungie cord for this pur­pose and use my cam­era bag as the weight. Tying the tri­pod to a secure point embed­ded in the ground is even bet­ter but less portable. This is a big help for long exposures.

If it is windy, I will stand upwind with my coat open like a flasher try­ing to pro­tect the cam­era from mov­ing. Every lit­tle bit helps.

Small tripods for small cam­eras are use­ful too. Gorilla Pod makes a pop­u­lar flex­i­ble leg tri­pod that will wrap around a pipe or chair back.

Some peo­ple make their own tripods. You can see a wide vari­ety at Instructables.com.

I find that an unin­tended advan­tage to using a tri­pod is that it slows me down. Mov­ing and fram­ing takes more effort and I find myself spend­ing extra time think­ing through the shot.

You might want to add a mono pod to your col­lec­tion. They add sta­bil­ity, are easy to carry and can be used in places where tripods would be awk­ward or for­bid­den. Even using a mono pod, I look to sup­port it against some­thing solid, such as a rail­ing. Place the base firmly against your foot or even inside your shoe. And, again, shorter is more sta­ble. Only extend it as far as you need to.

The idea is you can improve the sharp­ness of your pho­tographs sim­ply by cre­at­ing a pos­i­tive sta­ble plat­form for the cam­era, whether it be on a $1000 tri­pod or the top of a fence post.

More focus to come…