Night Photography

This month I decided to take a Night Photography class from the Leesburg School of Photography. As I have been trying to improve my photographic skills it seemed that it was time to tackle a new topic. This class was an introductory level course and it was taught by Tom Ramsay, the lead instructor at the school. Tom is a very accomplished photographer and it turns out that he was an excellent instructor! You can learn more about Tom and his photography at:

http://momentwithnature.com/Moment_with_Nature/Welcome.html

The classes consisted of a brief discussion on some topic related to night photography and then we went out to shoot with the new skills that we learned.

In the past when I had tried to photograph anything at night, my photos were of extremely poor quality. I was usually trying to increase my ISO, slow down my shutter speed and open up the aperture. It seemed that was the approach to use in low light situations. Tom taught us that we could take good pictures without resorting to exaggerating these techniques. The pictures that I am posting were all shot at 200 ISO, f8 aperture and a shutter speed of 1/40. Of critical importance was the use of a tripod and I used my new tripod on these occasions with success!

These photos were adjusted in post-processing with Lightroom 5 and all of them were cropped a little. I was very pleased with the results, especially considering my previous failures. Five of the photographs exhibit examples of invisible moving cars with just the headlights and taillights exposed. These were fun pictures to take. I had shot a few others but they were not as good as these. Two of the photos were of a modern water fountain complete with pulsing lights. These were difficult shots and I am very happy with how they turned out. The other two pictures are of a wall and two buildings. These were nice shots with great detail in the surfaces. I finally managed to get pretty good focus even with low light levels.

At this stage, I am feeling like some progress is being made with my photographic skills. I am now a member of the Loudoun Photo Club and hope to compete in some of the contests for novice photographers. In the future, I will post any submissions for your review. You can learn more about the Loudoun Photo Club by clicking this link:

http://www.loudounphotoclub.com/