Night photography! I kind of had to phone it in this week, guys. We had one clear night and I was carless and home with my daughter, so I couldn’t go out when it was properly dark. But I knew of a lovely church within walking distance that I’ve been meaning to shoot for a while, so we trekked out there with my camera and tripod.
I’ve done night photography before, you can see my shots and my process here.
This week I tried to shoot panoramas since IÂ was close to my subject (can’t get too far away without a road and cars in the way) but it proved to be pretty difficult. The tripod I’m working with isn’t the best and I was having a hard time panning smoothly to capture multiple shots in a row. I wound up hand-holding the camera for most of them. I shot on aperture priority with the aperture wide open to gather as much light as possible and at ISO 100, but that left parts of the scene blurry. I didn’t take enough shots of the scene to get the detail I wanted when stacking my images.
Here’s an incredibly helpful video on image stacking and panoramas, which I should have watched before I went out:
I’m not thrilled with how any of my shots came out. I really wish I’d taken more time and captured more shots of each part of the building to stitch them together.
f/3.5, 1/20th, ISO 100
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f/3.5, 1/40th, ISO 100
f/3.5, 1/30th, ISO 100
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I also chose to center all of these shots to make the building feel as impressive as it is, but none of them are perfectly symmetrical which just makes it feel off.
The first and third shots I made virtual copies of, then edited one to expose for the sky and one to expose for the building, merging them as HDR. I’m afraid I was a bit lazy and have some haloing around the building now that I look at it.Â
Are any of you shooting on the theme each week? How are you finding it?
I try and shoot something each week to submit, but I don’t think I’ll have time to go out this week at night, so it will have to be one from a couple of weeks ago.
If it really is night with the dark sky, there are all sorts of rules and techniques to get the right exposure, but I usually end up doing lots of trial and error shots just in case !
Hi there. Have you got the link please to submit this weeks shot? Thanks!
Hi Ian, it’s always sdp.io/submit, you need to wait until the show starts to submit.
Planning on something out of the box a bit so hopefully it will come out ok… who knows….
Nice, Siobhán.
I can’t think of anything that isn’t a cliché.
(Though it does present the opportunity to put something in the shadows for Chelsea to find…..)
Love the blue light in your church pictures and doing a panorama is something I’d never have thought of – wot with all the faffin’ about ‘n all…
I am anxious to get to where I can post photos; I am hoping to start with “abandoned”. Unfortunately, living in Vegas makes it hard to shoot in abandoned places due to access restrictions. I will be on the hunt for something;-) Thanks for all of the hard work.
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.