Paul's Night Sky

A deep, inky-black velvet sky with pinpricks of diamond-white stars. This is most certainly Not Coming In Dubai. Even on a clear night, there's so much light pollution bouncing back from the humidity and dust in the air that the whole sky takes on the pinky-orange glow of high-pressure sodium.

My offerings are all straight out of the camera except for cropping to 800pix. I set up on a tripod and tried a whole variety of different shutter speeds and apertures. Here are the edited not-quite-as-low-as-the-other lights.

Natural

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 at 95mm
F/18 1.6sec
ISO 2500

This one is as close as I could get to what my eyes could actually see. The sodium glow over Dubai silhouettes the gate light and the edges of the buildings. The crescent moon is visible, but it's difficult to see the whole lunar disc.

Moody

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 at 75mm
F/5 1/6sec
ISO 2500

I think the second image is more pleasing to the eye because it expresses more of a 'night' aspect.

Short DoF

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 at 75mm
F/5 1/6sec
ISO 2500

See what happens at a wide F-stop? The gate light in the foreground falls out of focus. I wasn't sure whether this is a fault or a feature. Certainly, putting less important parts of the image in shot but out of focus can help to give an impression of depth.

Which is it, then: 'Natural' or 'Short DoF'?

Reflections on Water

Well, here come my offerings for this month. As Richard so astutely pointed out, with clouds hanging low and pendulous with precipitation, there was going to be no shortage of the wet stuff lying around waiting to be photographed. I tried to avoid the obvious 'taxi plunging through puddle', because there's plenty of those circulating on the interwebs.

Gate

Nikon D70s
Sigma 50mm
F/2.8 1/45s

Tried to get some symmetry here, with the gate lights and their reflections in the puddle. The hosepipe also counts as 'water', partly because I liked the splash of contrasting colour and also because I wasn't about to clone it out. That treatment was reserved for the obtrusive red 'No Parking' sign on the wall opposite the gate.

Minaret

Nikon D70s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 112mm
F/16 1/60s

Having retrieved my camera from the car, I was heading back into the office with intent to take a particular shot that I had in mind. Whilst that shot never happened, I saw the minaret reflected in a puddle and liked the texture. I simply inverted the image.

Anchored

Nikon D70s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 170mm
F/5.6 1/250s

Dubai Boat Show offered plenty of opportunities for 'Water' as the subject matter. I tweaked up the red gelcoat using a mask so that the red would 'pop' without the water developing a reddish colour cast.

Bow

Nikon D70s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 29mm
F/4.2 1/20s
Auto ISO

More Boat Show. It got dark, and I knew from experience that tripods on floating boats and pontoons is a recipe for camera shake, even if some oaf doesn't kick it all into the oggin. So I used the trick of setting the film speed (on a DSLR - Hahaha!) to Auto so that I could hand-hold the camera. There's a little bit of cropping and cloning to get rid of distracting bright lights. Look at the symmetry of the boat in the water, and also note the metalwork at the waterline that just hints of Poseidon's trident.

Reflections

Nikon D70s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 38mm
F/4.8 1/10s
Auto ISO

Again, hand-held in the dark (don't you just love vibration-reduction lenses?) at the Boat Show. The whole frame is of a sexily lit speedboat, but I thought the coloured reflections were more interesting. The graininess is caused by the high 'film speed' and also the cropping.

I should also note that I wanted to freeze the ripples in the water, so long shutter speeds that would allow blurring were something I actively sought to avoid.

GPP - Twilight and Night time

Well GPP is upon us again and I have been waiting with much excitement as I have been able to find the time to sign up for four of the workshops.  The first of these is Twilight and Night time photography with Chris Hurt.

The course was pretty good with lots of pointers and tips and most importantly a all permission granted opportunity to take the cameras AND TRIPODS in to Mandiate - or at least the hotel part.   It therefore thought I'd share a couple of images from the course as well as a few of the top tips:

Madenate Pier With Burj

(f4.0,Tv=0.5,ISO250,FL20mm)

This shot is a photo stitch of two shots but other than that there are no photoshop trickery in this.  After all the aim of the course was to learn the trick to get the shot in camera.  I must admit in this low res shot it looks quite a bit brighter than the full sized.  I loved this shot for the composition and the way the longer exposure had smoothed out the water

Madinate Pier and Twilight

(f6.3, ISO250,FL20mm,bum=wet)

This shot I completely love as it caught all the things he was telling us.  Also I shot is 'shady' white balance which gives the shot a lot more warmth than the first one.  Also, focusing on the pier only and not trying to get the Burj in as well allowed me to crop a little nicer and avoid barrel distortion.

So, the top tips from the course:

Twlight lasts for just 30 minutes in Dubai so get there early and set up, because you are not going to get much time.

Best shots are taken in the 15 minutes after the sun has gone below the horizon

Always shoot dusk and twlight shots in manual mode as YOU need to do the metering.  The camera WILL get confused

Spot meter and set your Tv and A while pointing at a clear bit of sky (no sun and no artificial light).  Then frame and shoot with these settings - This works because although 100% of your composition might be focused on the item the foreground the sky makes of far more of the area of the shot and so must drive the exposure.  The camera will meter for he brightest part.

Shoot in shade mode will add warmth - shoot in RAW will allow you to play with WB afterwards

When shooting the light reflections on the water get down real low so that the water becomes a feature of the foreground

Shoot in as low an ISO as you can and put the camera on a tripod - This will give the smoothest colurs without noise and also allow the camera to soak up all those lovely colours.

For both these shots I waded in to the sea in order to get nice and close to the water and also to avoid other shooters getting in the way of my shots.  David no doubt has shots of me doing this and looking a proper wally into the bargin but I don't care, I liek the results.

Comments, critique or jsut suggestions for other was to make the shots work always welcome