Light Painting Event in Half Moon Bay

July 17 and 18

Click here to see and download your drawings from the “Pay it Forward” art project . (Pictures are now up! Thank you for playing.)

Click here to view my new Light Drawing video course for free on Skillshare.

In association with Coastal Arts Enterprises

and produced by Lainey Sainte Marie,

we will be light paint­ing por­traits and light draw­ing live on Fri­day evening , July 17 from 4 pm to 9 pm and again on Sat­ur­day after­noon, July 18 from 12 noon to 5 pm. Free! 

Come play with us and cre­ate some unique pho­to­graph­ic art. Images will be uploaded to Flickr the next day and avail­able for down­load, again for free! We sup­ply the lights, cam­era and action.

We will be at the Coastal Arts Muse­um (at Zabal­la Square)

300 Main St., Half Moon Bay, CA 94019

Paint a por­trait or draw from your imag­i­na­tion!

Con­tact me here for more infor­ma­tion.

I had a great time at Half Moon Bay’s Pump­kin Fes­ti­val this year. Thanks to Made on the Coast sup­port­ing local artists, I had a booth sell­ing my pho­tographs on Main Street which pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet so many peo­ple and get some expo­sure.

If you asked about up com­ing projects, here are a few links.

Pigeon Point Light­house Pro­jec­tion Event

Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 15th is the annu­al cel­e­bra­tion of the first light­ing in 1872 and they nor­mal­ly have activ­i­ties and music dur­ing the day. Since the Fres­nel lens was removed in 2011, they no longer light the orig­i­nal lamp, an event that attract­ed thou­sands of peo­ple. This year I will be pro­ject­ing images of the coast­side and past light­ings onto the light­house to bring back some of that expe­ri­ence and raise aware­ness of the restora­tion chal­lenges. Look to the light­house as it gets dark. Read more about the light­house here.

This event is made pos­si­ble through a gen­er­ous grant from the Made on the Coast Emerg­ing Artist pro­gram and the Half Moon Bay Beau­ti­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee.

Coast­side Pho­tog­ra­phers Meet Up Group

Coast­side Pho­tog­ra­phers is 200 strong and rich with fun lov­ing pho­tog­ra­phers look­ing to share pho­to walks and exper­tise with any­one with a cam­era. We meet pri­mar­i­ly along the San Mateo Coun­ty Coast at var­i­ous times each month. Check out our web page for future and past meets at Coast­side Pho­tog­ra­phers.

Pho­tog­ra­phy Class­es

In asso­ci­a­tion with the Half Moon Bay Parks and Rec, I teach Basic and Inter­me­di­ate pho­tog­ra­phy class­es. Check my sched­ule in the cur­rent Activ­i­ty Guide here. Watch for a spe­cial 3 night class in Jan­u­ary ded­i­cat­ed to Night Pho­tog­ra­phy and Light Paint­ing.

On Tues­day, Octo­ber 7 at about 6:30 pm, at the John­ston House, join me, just after sun­set, for a pro­jec­tion pre­sen­ta­tion of his­toric images, Galen Wolf paint­ings and pho­tos from around the San Mateo Coun­ty Coast.

The John­ston House is locat­ed at 110 Hig­gins-Puris­ma Road, here in Half Moon Bay, CA.

The weath­er is look­ing good to view a great sun­set on the ocean (about 6:45 pm) and, about 10 min­utes lat­er, a full moon rise behind the John­ston House.

As it gets dark,  I will begin a video pre­sen­ta­tion on the front of the John­ston House, show­ing pho­tos of the John­ston House jux­ta­posed from the past and present.

There will also be pho­tos of Galen Wolf paint­ings, an artist that doc­u­ment­ed life in San Mateo Coun­ty in the 1930s and pho­tos I have tak­en on the Coast­side.

Bring your cam­era and a flash­light and some­thing to sit on, if you like.

After the pre­sen­ta­tion, I will attempt to per­form some light draw­ing which will also be pro­ject­ed onto the house.

This is a free event! Bring your friends and fam­i­ly! See you there!

This event is made pos­si­ble by Made On The Coast, The Half Moon Bay Beau­ti­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee, The John­ston House Foun­da­tion and pre­sent­ed by me, Stu­art Nafey.

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.

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.

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.