We just returned from 3 days at the Reno Bal­loon Race with near­ly 3000 pic­tures and a few dozen videos. The ques­tion is this: what are the most effi­cient work flow solu­tions for review­ing, edit­ing and post­ing the best pic­tures? I think that will be the sub­ject of my next blog post. In the mean­time, here are a few choice pixs. Click any see to the larg­er ver­sions.

For more hot air bal­loons, my Flickr gallery is here and Lori’s gallery is here.

While search­ing for a light paint­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty last week­end dur­ing the full moon, I noticed that the John­ston House in Half Moon Bay sat dark on it’s hill. The house is nor­mal­ly lit by an intense white light and stands out clear­ly while dri­ving high­way 1 through town. Large and white, I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to jazz it up a bit with a new spot light I recent­ly pur­chased.

What I learned today: a def­i­n­i­tion of low key light­ing.

From Wikipedia:

Low-key light­ing is a style of light­ing for pho­tog­ra­phy, film or tele­vi­sion. It attempts to cre­ate a chiaroscuro effect. In tra­di­tion­al pho­to­graph­ic light­ing, three-point light­ing uses a key light, a fill light, and a back light for even illu­mi­na­tion. Low-key light­ing requires only one key light, option­al­ly con­trolled with a fill light or a sim­ple reflec­tor.

Low key light accen­tu­ates the con­tours of an object by throw­ing areas into shade while a fill light or reflec­tor may illu­mi­nate the shad­ow areas to con­trol con­trast. The rel­a­tive strength of key-to-fill, known as the light­ing ratio, can be mea­sured using a light meter. Low key light­ing has a high­er light­ing ratio, e.g. 8:1, than high key light­ing, which can approach 1:1.

The term “low key” is used in cin­e­matog­ra­phy to refer to any scene with a high light­ing ratio, espe­cial­ly if there is a pre­dom­i­nance of shad­owy areas. It tends to height­en the sense of alien­ation felt by the view­er, hence is com­mon­ly used in film noir and hor­ror gen­res.

I always under­stood the term in a venac­u­lar kind of way, mean­ing a kind of dark envi­ron­ment (a jazz club imme­di­ate­ly comes to mind), but when I took on a recent project put forth at Uta­ta, this is the first pic­ture I entered.

The project, enti­tled “Iron Pho­togr­pher” to include a flower, some­thing rusty and low key light­ing. I felt the pic­ture met 2 of the 3 cri­te­ria and I under­ex­posed to try to meet the 3rd.

Placed along­side the oth­er sub­mit­ted pic­tures, my pho­to pops out much lighter then the oth­ers. So I thought deep­er about the term and real­ized that “low key” is prob­a­bly a tech­ni­cal term that I have giv­en lit­tle thought to. How often have I seen “key grip” in the cred­its of a movie and not tak­en the time to look up what it means.

The Wikipedia def­i­n­i­tion actu­al­ly and briefly explains nor­mal pho­to­graph­ic light­ing as hav­ing 3 con­sid­er­a­tions, a “key” light being the most impor­tant (the “key” light­ing illu­mi­nat­ing the most impor­tant fea­ture of the sub­ject), a fill light to reduce con­trast and a back light to fur­ther even out the shad­ows. Low key can result when you remove the fill and back light­ing. It also sug­gests the “chiaroscuro effect” which defines a large con­trast between light and dark through­out the entire pic­ture.

An image search on Google shows many low key exam­ples. And my image still appears too light.

I was think­ing that my pho­to has only one light source, the sun, but the prob­lem aris­es as the sun is reflect­ed off the grass in the back­ground, a back­light if you will that dis­tracts from the con­trast with­in the sub­jects, that is if you are aim­ing for “low key”.

So, I assume at this point that the pic­tures fails the 3rd cri­te­ria of low key light­ing as is gen­er­al­ly accept­ed and I need to try again. Maybe this can be sal­vaged using Pho­to­shop to alter the back­ground. Maybe an off cam­era flash, con­trol­ling the ambi­ent light of the back­ground with a fast shut­ter speed would accom­plish the feat.

Maybe the pic­tured failed but, FTW, the rea­son I impose projects on myself is to incite me to shoot and hope­ful­ly learn someth­ng I did not know before.

This is a good time for night pho­tog­ra­phy. The moon is full, the skies are rel­a­tive­ly clear and the tem­per­a­ture is not too cold.

Here are a few web pages with tips for pho­tograph­ing the moon itself.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/howtophoto/
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/moonset-moonrise-photography.html
http://digital-photography-school.com/moon-photography-made-simple

And on Fri­day Sep­tem­ber 4, the rare event of the full moon set­ting just as the sun ris­es allows you to shoot a low moon with your choice of fore­ground illu­mi­nat­ed by that ris­ing sun. Get­ting out of bed that ear­ly on Fri­day is good prac­tice for the upcom­ing Reno Bal­loon Races.

Moon­light pro­vides a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to take unusu­al pic­tures of com­mon objects. Get your tri­pod and remote shut­ter cable out, drag along a part­ner and find some­thing to take long expo­sure shots of. Old cars and ancient archi­tec­ture are favorites. Bring along some col­ored lights and a flash and try some light paint­ing.

It’s a hol­i­day week­end and many of you have an extra day to play with, so why not give it a shot?

Last year, Andrew Zuck­er­man pub­lished a book of por­traits and inter­views with 51 icon­ic peo­ple over the age of 65 enti­tled Wis­dom. Vis­it the web site to not only get an over view of this work but also to study an amaz­ing “Mak­ing Of” video that shows the stu­dio set­up required to obtain the con­sis­tent look of the por­traits. From the pho­tog­ra­pher’s point of view, the amount of equip­ment that was hauled around the world and the light­ing setups are worth see­ing.

We are going to see John Wor­ley play at the Hed­ley Club and Tod Dick­ow is sit­ting in. Then I remem­bered that I scored a few good shots of him last month at Gor­don Bier­sch play­ing with Fas­ma­nia. The band plays in the back alley in the evening with a black net stretched across as a ceil­ing. This usu­al­ly presents quite the chal­lenge using the 70–300 f4/5.6 lens, need­ing to crank the ISO to 3200 on my D80. All things con­sid­ered, this shot came out fair­ly good. I like that I caught the Gor­don Bier­sch logo behind him. A larg­er depth of field might have brought the sign into focus but, I need­ed a f5.6 just to get 1/60th of a sec­ond shut­ter speed. If they would only remain per­fect­ly still while play­ing!

My pic­ture of the day is a man on a bike rid­ing through Quar­ry Lakes park in Fre­mont, Cal­i­for­nia, a rel­a­tive­ly new park devel­oped from an old grav­el quar­ry.

Too often, I leave the set­tings on my cam­era to what­ev­er the last shoot or pic­ture required and then find that a day or 2 lat­er, those set­tings are not appro­pri­ate for the next shoot. Many of my pic­tures are spon­ta­neous action shots and do not allow much time to check the set­tings, let alone frame and focus. Even when I have the time, it is easy to for­get (my mind is like a seive) one or more impor­tant con­trols that could be set to take a bet­ter pic­ture. So bor­row­ing from many oth­er pho­tog­ra­pher’s sug­ges­tions, this is a list of 10 default cam­era set­tings for my Nikon D80 that I review before I leave the house.

ISO = 100
Auto Focus = On
Aut­o­fo­cus = Con­tin­u­ous
VR = On and Nor­mal
Cam­era Mode = Auto
Pic­ture Qual­i­ty = RAW
White bal­ance = Auto
Meter­ing = Matrix
Bat­tery = Charged
Card = For­mat­ted

ISO = 100 - This is a killer. Using the lens­es I own, I often must crank the ISO to get decent expo­sure. Pho­tograph­ing musi­cians in avail­able light is tough as are action shots of surfers with my 70 ‑300 f/4.5–5.6 lens. If I for­get to reset the ISO back to 100, I lat­er find the nice land­scape pic­tures I took to be very noisy at ISO 3200.

Auto Focus = on - As my eyes get worse, I depend more and more on aut­o­fo­cus. I some­times shut this off after get­ting the prop­er mid-air point of focus when antic­i­pat­ing a crit­ter to walk or fly into that space. For­get this and you will waste a few pre­cious shots lat­er when you are try­ing to shoot any­thing else. It is also a good idea to occa­sion­al­ly check that the diopter set­ting in the view find­er is adjust­ed to your vision.

Aut­o­fo­cus = Con­tin­u­ous Ser­vo — Often, for me, quick grab shots are of mov­ing tar­gets so my default is Con­tin­u­ous Ser­vo (AF‑C). Hit­ting the AF but­ton twice will eas­i­ly take me to Sin­gle Ser­vo (AF‑S) if I want to lock focus.

VR = On and nor­mal - For lens­es equip­ment­ed with VR, the major­i­ty of my shots are hand­held, but when tak­ing long expo­sures on a tri­pod, Nikon rec­om­mends shut­ting VR off. The penal­ty for for­get­ting to turn this back on is blur­ry long dis­tance shots when you are back to shoot­ing hand­held. I rarely touch the normal/active switch, but it can be moved and nor­mal is my default. You might use Active when shoot­ing from a mov­ing car, but I am usu­al­ly dri­ving and not tak­ing pic­tures. It is right next to the VR on/off switch, so check it while you are there.

Cam­era Mode = Auto - I usu­al­ly shoot in Aper­ture or Shut­ter pri­or­i­ty modes and some­times in Man­u­al and one or the oth­er may not be right for an instant grab shot. So, my defa­lut set­ting is Auto. I may take a quick shot in auto, review the meter set­tings and then move to a pri­or­i­ty mode from there.

Pic­ture Qual­i­ty = RAW - It is more work, but I need all the help (and res­o­lu­tion) I can get, so I shoot in RAW. There are times when I want to dis­play the pic­tures quick­ly to a client. I will then shoot RAW + JPEG. For­get to reset this and it great­ly reduces stor­age space. I may also shoot in JPEG only when using burst mode for action shots and need more buffer space. 5 or 6 RAW shots will fill the buffer and may cause me to miss the best shot in a series. For­get to go back to RAW and you lose res­o­lu­tion and many oth­er con­trols (like the abil­i­ty to change white bal­ance) when you need it.

White Bal­ance = Auto - Anoth­er killer set­ting if wrong. It is not dif­fi­cult to hit the WB but­ton and turn the dial think­ing you are chang­ing the ISO and end up shoot­ing day­light pic­tures with a Tung­sten White Bal­ance and nev­er notice this until you are back home review­ing pic­tures. At least I think that is what hap­pened. This is where shoot­ing in RAW mode helped recov­er some shots.

Meter­ing = Matrix - Unless I specif­i­cal­ly want spot meter­ing for a shot, I default to Matrix Meter­ing. I am still study­ing when best to change this set­ting.

Bat­tery = charged - This seems sil­ly but espe­cial­ly when tak­ing long expo­sure pic­tures, you can nev­er have too many ful­ly charged bat­ter­ies. You will not be hap­py dri­ving to that spot and car­ry­ing all your gear down the goat path to the beach in the dark and run­ning out of pow­er after 5 shots. Bru­tal. Anoth­er thing to con­sid­er, Rick Sam­mon says that low bat­ter­ies oper­ate at high­er tem­per­a­tures which may affect the col­or bal­ance in the image sen­sor.

Card = for­mat­ted - I try to start a shoot with an emp­ty card. there is noth­ing like run­ning out of mem­o­ry and hav­ing to delete select­ed shots from a pre­vi­ous shoot and won­der­ing if you had already down­loaded them. When you get home, down­load the pic­tures, then back them up to a sec­ond dri­ve and then (and only then) for­mat the card. For­mat­ting not only deletes the pic­tures but cleans all the bad bits out and pro­vides max­i­mum stor­age avail­abil­i­ty.

So, who says that dig­i­tal cam­eras make tak­ing pic­tures eas­i­er then ever. In the old days, after load­ing the film, you only thought of aper­ture, shut­ter speed and focus. Now there are dozens of but­tons, menus and sub menus that can make your day or cause you grief. The set­tings I cov­er here are easy to get at and change (or mess up). I am not even talk­ing about cus­tom set­tings, deep with­in the menu dun­geon. See your Thom Hogan guide for those set­tings.

I have suf­fered from every one of these set­ting fail­ures, some­times more then one at a time. So, I have writ­ten them down on a piece of paper and put them in the clear win­dow on my cam­era bag in an attempt to min­i­mize the dam­age and just maybe get some bet­ter pic­tures. These may not be your default set­tings, but they are all good things to think about before leav­ing for that shoot and look­ing unpre­pared. The best time to check your set­tings just might be when you get home, while the pic­tures are down­load­ing to your PC.

I can­not pos­tive­ly iden­ti­fy this but­ter­fly or flower which I found along the Merced Riv­er just east of Mari­posa, but it is still my pic­ture of the day.

In the last work­shop, we talked of pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties in our back­yard, one of which occurs when there is a “minus tide”. Essen­tial­ly, a minus tide is a rel­a­tive­ly rare, very low ocean water lev­el con­di­tion that expos­es a large amount of reef or ocean bot­tom. The coast here has a vast amount of shal­low reef that, at a very low tide, traps many marine ani­mals and expos­es under­wa­ter plant life not nor­mal­ly seen while walk­ing on the beach dur­ing reg­u­lar tides.

I found this more tech­ni­cal expla­na­tion on the inter­net:

Jeff Ren­ner
What’s a minus tide?
A minus tide, also some­times called a neg­a­tive tide, is an unusu­al­ly low tide. Tide ‘heights’ are ref­er­enced to a base lev­el set as zero. This lev­el, called the ‘datum’, is the same lev­el used to ref­er­ence water depths on NOAA nav­i­ga­tion­al charts.

Usu­al­ly, low tides still remain a bit above zero, often a foot or two above. But the swing from high tide to low tide lev­els is great­est when the sun and moon are either on exact oppo­site sides of the earth, or espe­cial­ly when they’re on the same side of the earth. This cor­re­sponds to a full or a ‘new’ moon. The grav­i­ta­tion­al ‘tug’ by both the sun and moon pull water toward them. As the earth rotates under the oceans, high tides occur when that part of the earth is fac­ing either the moon or sun (or both). Low tides occur about six hours lat­er, when the earth has turned nine­ty degrees away from either of those ‘bulges’ of water.

Sun­flower Sea Star

This is indeed a pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty to cap­ture a wide vari­ety of sea life pro­vid­ed the light is right and you are very care­ful with your equip­ment. Of course, you must con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty of drop­ping your cam­era in the water. Even if the strap is secure­ly around your neck, the rocks are slip­pery and if you fall in, your cam­era is going with you. These are things prob­a­bly obvi­ous to you but did not occur to me until I got out there for the first time.

But, if you are adven­tur­ous and except that risk, here are a few tips.
- Water proof boots help you get around eas­i­er and give you a bit more con­fi­dence.
- This is a good place to exper­i­ment with a polar­iz­ing fil­ter which can reduce reflec­tions on the sur­face of the water and pro­vide bet­ter pho­to­graph­ic access.
- Polar­ized sun­glass­es will also help your vision.
- Some kind of a reflec­tor can be used to illu­mi­nate the crit­ters hid­ing in the cracks or pro­vide more direct light when the sun is low.
- I find a tri­pod to be a hin­drance but you may want to try one if the light­ing is poor.

When are these tides? Well, there are 2 low tides every 24 hours, but the times vary. You just need to know what time they hap­pen and how low they will go. And you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to wait for an absolute minus tide. Look for any tide near 0 and take a walk to the beach with your cam­era.

Click here to go to the dai­ly tide chart adjust­ed for Half Moon Bay. The chart shows the tides 2 days at a time. Scroll down to find more search options and a link for the entire year. I see that that the minus tides for August and Sep­tem­ber will most­ly be between 1am and 5am, when they do occur. Octo­ber and Novem­ber have some low tides on some late after­noons. The first week of Decem­ber is look­ing good for some ‑1.50 foot tides.

Check out pho­tos oth­ers have tak­en. Click here to go to Flickr pic­tures tagged with the words “fitzger­ald and marine” which show many pic­tures from the Fitzger­ald Marine Pre­serve in Moss Beach. The pre­serve is eas­i­ly accessed and very pop­u­lar dur­ing these low tides.

Click here to go to a tide pool group in Flickr.

The Half Moon Bay Review post­ed an arti­cle about the Fitzger­ald Marine Pre­serve and how it recent­ly gained enhanced pro­tec­tion sta­tus, a good thing with the state park clos­ings loom­ing over our heads. Click here to read it.

Well, that should keep you busy for a bit. Have fun and take some pic­tures!