By definition, night photography is high contrast photography, rendering output that is frequently low-key. One of your challenges will be to find an exposure setting that allows for enough exposure on the highlights while retaining a rich black background.

Another challenge will be to hold your camera still enough unless you are attempting to capture motion blur.

One annoyance to overcome is that most Nikon consumer-level cameras pop up the flash by default whenever the onboard computer thinks that the scene is not bright enough. To overcome this shortcoming — you won’t want flash — switch from auto exposure mode or those silly “Scene Exposure Modes” to shutter priority exposure mode [S]. You’ll most likely be fiddling with shutter speeds when taking pictures at night. The aperture is likely to be wide open most of the time. There are times when you may want to stop down to increase the depth of field or force a slower shutter speed but for the most part stick with shutter priority.

Many will tell you that a tripod is essential for night photography. A tripod is certainly useful if you can stand the limitations it will put on your technique. Personally I hate them and usually leave mine at home. I like to work fast with maximum flexibility in terms of angle, elevation, composition and have found that a tripod is extra weight that never gets used. All of the photographs taken below were taken without benefit of a tripod. On the other hand, using a tripod will slow you down, forcing you to think through each shot which is always a good thing. Your choice.

An alternative to tripod use is the use of higher than normal ISO settings. Be careful with this. Settings of ISO 1600 or ISO 3200 will boost the sensitivity of the sensor so that you can use daytime technique at night. Such high ISO settings, however, will cause the darkest parts of your composition to be filled with something called “noise”. Sensor noise is an ugly beast. Sensor noise will ruin many photographs. If you keep your compositions simple enough, a few bright highlights on an otherwise dark background, it’s easy enough to clean up the noisy background at the post-production stage in a program like Photoshop. This cannot be easily done with a more complex composition, however, or in photographs with intentional motion streaks.

One other concern about night photography: use a buddy, preferably a burly one, to add to your personal security while out on the town.

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

Moonset over Kitsilano: Taken on a frigid November night with an ISO of 3200 using a 80 mm lens, aperture wide open at ƒ4 with a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second. The cold crisp conditions severely reduced the carrying capacity of the air for moisture and pollution, resulting in sharper than normal points of light on the shore opposite the Stanley Park seawall. By selecting the highlights in Photoshop, feathering a bit then selecting the inverse I was able to delete the background and most of the sensor noise along with it. Then it was simply a matter of replacing that background with a fully black layer. Since I was returning from work on my nightly commute through the park there’s a less than zero chance that I would have had a tripod with me. Besides, using a tripod and slower shutter speeds would have captured the movement of the moon and the waves, blurring them and ultimately ruining the shot. This shot works because all of the elements are crystalline sharp.

Another Moon Shot: This one was taken, handheld, from a dark corner of brightly lit Itaewon, a combat zone in Seoul. I found a bit of irony with the symbolism floating over sin city, though the photo itself doesn’t convey that.

This shot was taken at the darker, southern end of Kyoto’s Kiyamachi Dori. Travelling is hard enough without being encumbered with a tripod. This shot was also handheld [50 mm; ISO 3200; 1/15th second; ƒ5.6], spot metering off the highlights. While not a brilliant photo, I like the simple graphic composition and the subtlety of the light. It does capture a nuance of Japan’s mizu shobai or “water business”. Not a lot of post processing went into this image other than tweaking the contrast a bit.

Also handheld, this shot of a Ferris wheel at Vancouver’s Pacific National Exhibition was taken with the following specs: 10.5 mm fisheye; ISO 200; 2.5 seconds; ƒ22. As you can see, I switched to aperture priority [A], stopping down to reduce the amount of light, allowing a longer exposure so that the movement of the ride could be captured without blowing out the highlights and still allowing a rich black background. Note: Wide angle optics tend to limit camera shake; telephotos to over-emphasize it. Again, little postprocessing was required.

Painting with Light: same settings as above except that I used a longer shutter speed of 7.1 seconds, consciously moving the camera to paint streaks of light across the sensor. This kind of motion photography requires plenty of trial and error. On the other hand, experimenting is always fun.

All photographs were taken by Brian Grover. To browse more images visit my photo gallery here: Brian Grover Photography.

#19 Signs of the Times <<->> #21 The Colour Purple

This is another assignment designed to refresh your thinking and boost your powers of observation. The assignment is simple, head out on the town and look for interesting compositions that somehow embrace the colour purple. Shop windows, festivals, street banners, drugstore shelves, produce vendors, and cosmetics counters are just some of the places where purple might be expected to rear its royal head. And if, along the way, opportunities in other shades present themselves, snap them up and add them to your growing portfolio.

The following examples came from a trip to the Kansai region of Japan.

Rural Japan is a sheer delight not only because the crushing crowds avoid “inaka” as if it were radioactive. Much in the traditional way of life is preserved here, carrying on largely out of the step with the beguiling modernity of the hyperurban metropolises most people prefer to live in. Pictured here, a thicket of feral cosmos in Nosé, Osaka Prefecture.

A trio of typical Japanese shoppers apparently “Love Here”. All purple prose aside, what I love is that a nationwide department store would earmark millions for a promotional campaign — including this multistory malignant horror — and blow it on some basic English grammar. You spend here! Their designers even mucked up the usage of commas. Sheesh! I hope they weren’t former students of mine.

Glistening octopi at Uondana Fish Market in Akashi, Japan take on a purple hue after boiling.

“Asa gao” or morning glory take on many colours in Japan including these in Nara City, sporting a range of violets, blues, purples and ants.

All photographs were taken by Brian Grover. To browse more images visit my photo gallery here: Brian Grover Photography.

#20 Night Photography <<->> #22 Bokeh

You’ll need some sunlight and some water and maybe a breeze to complete the next assignment. The term “bokeh” or “circles of confusion” [COCs] refers to out-of focus picture elements; details, if you will, that are placed beyond the range of your current mash up of ƒ-stop, focal length and shutter speed. Generally, circles of confusion are considered a good thing when integrated into a composition. Bokeh is derived from the Japanese term  meaning blurry.

Next time your glasses, goggles or sunglasses get sprinkled on look towards a bright spot in the sky and try focusing on the water droplets. What you’ll see are COCs in the raw.

Creating circles of confusion is relatively easy as long as you keep a few things in mind. First of all, wide-angle optics are not suitable for making circles of confusion for the simple reason that most wide-angle lenses are crisply focused from a meter or so in front of the lens to infinity and beyond. My fisheye starts focusing 3 cm from the front of the lens and never stops again. Telephotos and the longer zoom lens focal lengths are ideal for making circles of confusion. In fact, the longer the focal length, the better though maximum aperture has a role to play as well.

To make COCs, put on your longest lens and head to the beach on the next sunny day, positioning yourself so you’ll be able to shoot towards the sparkling highlights dancing on the waves. Choose a subject — a person, a bird, a bottle, a charging stegosaurus — in the foreground that you can easily line up with the highlights dancing in the distance. You may have to shoot from a low angle to do so.

Next, switch your exposure mode to Manual [M] and set your aperture wide open, controlling the light with the Shutter Speed only. Review the Manual Exposure section of your camera manual before heading out. Mastering this is an exceedingly important step in your development as a photographer.

Limiting the light can be challenging on an exceedingly bright day. If your fastest shutter speed is not fast enough, one workaround is to change your ISO to 100 to reduce the sensitivity of the sensor. Try also, underexposing by a full stop or more by using the [+/-] Exposure Compensation Button. If that still doesn’t work use your subject to block out some of the light reflecting off the water. You can also recompose, lining up the edge of the sparkling area instead of the middle.

Work fast and do not stare at the water highlights as they can permanently damage your eyes. On Nikon digital SLRs you can adjust the meter without looking through the viewfinder. Instead, use the the meter displayed in the LCD panel on the top, right of the camera body when exposure mode is set to Manual.

When all is set up — subject sharply focused, aperture wide open, exposure set — quickly compose and take the shot.

Circles of confusion occur under many conditions, not just when sparkly water is used as a background. They can be used, for instance, to soften the crowds in a stadium, separating the action from the distraction. COCs are very useful in night photography for the same reason. They can also provide a pleasant backdrop for outdoor portraiture. One note: The circles of confusion that are created by mirror lenses — bright, out-of-focus bagel-shapes — are generally considered unsightly and distracting.

I had to wade knee-deep into the water to line up the background highlights with the main subject. I spot-metered on the highlights, focused on the subject — a mossy outcrop offshore from Murcheson Island in the Queen Charlotte Islands — and snapped. The low-key foreground contrasts nicely with the bright pattern of circles behind it.

Here, glinting surface bubbles from a tiny tributary form increasingly flat circles of confusion as they move away from the point of critical focus. Photo mags and how-to books will tell you that you need a polarizing filter to take this shot. Personally I like the glare off water, any surface really, and consider it just another design element that can be used to enhance a photographic statement. In this shot, sockeye salmon rest, taking advantage of the camouflaging properties of the surface glare in the Adams River. This was taken during a banner year, when record numbers of sockeye returned to their birthplace to spawn. This cutline was written in autumn 2009, when the sockeye failed to return for the first time ever. You can bet humanity’s inhumanity lies at the root of it.

Also taken at the Adams River. Note how a slight shift in positioning in relation to the sun causes the surface glare — and bokeh — to vanish: no polarizing filter required.

Bokeh effects can be achieved with any brightly stippled subject from rain drops to foliage to window panes to the automobile headlights pictured here. A certain amount of contrast is required.

All photographs were taken by Brian Grover. To browse more images visit my photo gallery here: Brian Grover Photography.

#21 The Colour Purple <<->> #23 A Shadow World

Shadows will destroy many pictures before you learn to see them. Human perceptive organs are so good at editing the shadows out of our everyday world that we are often shocked to notice them marring our images after the shooting is over. With time, photographers naturally adapt, taking shadow detail into consideration whenever composing.

This exercise is designed to hasten the development of that sensitivity by having you look specifically for usable shadows in your picture-making efforts. Becoming aware of and editing out unwanted shadows will eventually become second nature. Head out into the community and observe how shadows fit into the landscape. Look for opportunities to enhance your photos by selectively including elements of shadow.

Early morning and late evening shadows are often enhanced by elongation and the attractive colours associated with the rising and setting of the sun. Midday shadows are often short, stubby and more challenging to work with.

The Edge of Night: Out for an early burn on my bike I caught this fisherman at the very crack of dawn.

Throngs of onlookers cluttering up the background hampered efforts to shoot Vancouver’s Celtic Festival. Shifting paradigms, I sought other ways to capture the spirit of a Celtic dancer. Here, shadow and silhouette are used to eliminate all complex detail in both subject and background, creating a simple and highly graphic expression.

I love racing the shadow of my bicycle and have often thought about photographing it when out for a burn. Though I haven’t succeeded, this is one of my best efforts to date. Surprisingly dangerous at high speeds, I’ve concluded that I really need to develop a special harness to get the shot.

When I noticed this shadow I quickly grabbed my camera, knowing that this would be the last photo of my pal of 16 years, Neko, who was scheduled for euthanization the next day. His waning health and imminent demise were very much at the forefront of my mind and the shadows seemed to speak eloquently, as did the sparkle in his eye.

A gap in the shadows of a tall bamboo hedge work well to light this aged supplicant from the side as she struggles up a slope at Kyoto’s Tofukuji Temple complex. Shadows provide a contrasting backdrop that effectively eliminates distracting detail from the entire scene.

All photographs were taken by Brian Grover. To browse more images visit my photo gallery here: Brian Grover Photography.

#22 Bokeh <<->> #24 Depth of Field

For many, photography is just another consumer experience. Their efforts are focused on acquiring equipment and debating its merits once acquired. One reason is that photo magazines tend to be absorbed with pitching the equipment of advertisers both present and future. Another reason is that it’s simply easier to buy photo equipment than take quality photos.

It’s a hackneyed truism that talented photographers are capable of taking photos of consequence with even the most rudimentary of cameras. The corollary being that those endowed with more cents than sense will invariably miss the shot in spite of their technically superior equipment. As with the act of creating photos, the purchase of photographic equipment should be the result of a great deal of thought and a great deal of restraint. Using the equipment that you have to its fullest capabilities is far more fruitful than stocking your gadget bag with every imaginable gizmo.

Since this is the final instalment in this series of photo assignments, as a parting shot, I’m going to relate a few final insights that can help give you an edge as a shooter.

Your assignment? Keep shooting!

Stay Motivated: Give yourself regular photographic objectives as a way of motivating yourself to get out and start snapping. I’ve tried to cultivate my intuition, being aware of it and listening whenever it starts screaming at me. I had noticed this little shop on Vancouver’s West Pender Street from the bus window on numerous occasions and, though at first glance it wasn’t much, something about it kept nagging at me. Finally I decided to take a stroll in that direction, on the prowl for fresh graffiti and other urban mayhem with the ultimate objective of getting a shot of the shop too. Not until I had viewed the photo after the fact did I realize the payoff. I started to notice details like the stuffed monkey swinging among the delightfully floating bananas, the five cent discount on bananas with a smile, the cross-cultural “Dairy & Ginseng” sign and, the pièce de résistance, the proprietor’s face gazing up and out of his forlorn little world. Even the lottery signs speak eloquently of desperation.

Be Flexible: Frequently the best photos are serendipitous ones, those taken incidentally within the context of different objectives. In this photo, taken in Kyoto’s historical Gion district, I was framing the noren — that hangy-downy banner you see over the doorway — when the staff member popped out of the door. Rather than breaking concentration, I switched focus, recomposed and took the shot, all in an instant. This was easily the best shot of the evening.

Listen to your Inner Sensor: This is another one of those shots that started off with a nagging curiosity. My intuition was telling me over and over again that the scene was significant but my rational side couldn’t see it. Finally, I just let the intuition takeover and captured this shot of the anachronistic Del Mar Inn, with its quirky slogan: “Unlimited Growth Increases the Divide”. Some years later, by chance, I met the building owner, George Riste, an octogenarian who happily took the time to explain the history of the building, the sentiments behind the slogan and the political fight behind the grim brick façade. A man of conviction, Mr. Riste battled long and hard against efforts by BC Hydro to acquire the property to develop into a new head office. Finally, the provincial government power monopoly gave up and built their glass and steel monstrosity around the Del Mar Inn instead. That structure can be seen glaring in the upper right hand corner of the photo. Resisting the urge to cash out, Mr. Riste was determined to protect one of the few remaining affordable refuges for the downtrodden in Vancouver.

Be Ready: A Camera left at home in a closet is not going to take many photos of consequence at all. Photo ops occur when you least expect them and usually when you are least prepared to deal with them. I was running a quick errand in Vancouver’s Chinatown but paused just long enough to grab my wife’s camera before heading out. On the way back I came across these zonked out druggies. Quickly I snapped off this shot and then the emergency responders arrived.

Put It All Together: Over the past 25 lessons we’ve looked at a number of approaches in isolation that can make your photos stand out if not outstanding. Besides the unconventional framing and precise timing, this shot employs rim lighting, silhouette and reflection resulting in a surreal effect. Every situation offers unique opportunities to you as a photographer. You have the tools now to assess any scene then, reaching into your toolbox, squeeze off a “keeper” or two.

All photographs were taken by Brian Grover. To browse more images visit my photo gallery here: Brian Grover Photography.

#25 The Rule of Thirds <<->> The Zen of Photography

Depth of field [DOF] refers to the area in front of the lens within which subject matter stays sharply focused. Understanding, manipulating and working with depth of field is one of the key skills you’ll need to master in order to move your photographic abilities forward. Today we master it.

You might be surprised to learn that your eye focuses in a two-step process. The lens does most of the focusing while the iris fine tunes the image for presentation to the light sensitive retina at the back of your eye. Likewise, the glass lens elements used by a camera gather the light and shape it in a general sense for presentation to the light sensitive sensor. The fine tuning is accomplished through the aperture, a variable-sized hole through which light must pass as it travels down the barrel of the lens.

As a photographer, then, focusing is a two-step process. The centre of focus is determined by moving the lens elements in a relationship to one another. In modern, automatic cameras most of this is done behind the scenes, achieved by simply pointing the camera at an object and pushing the shutter release down halfway. For many amateurs, this is where focusing stops altogether. More advanced photographers however know that the aperture is required to selectively determine which parts of the scene in front of and behind the centre of focus will stay sharp and which parts will remain blurry.

When the hole is large, that is to say when the aperture is wide open, detail directly in front of and behind the subject will appear blurry, becoming more and more blurry as the distance away from the subject increases. When the hole is tiny, that is to say when the aperture is “stopped down”, that detail in front of and behind the subject will remain sharp. Aperture setting then is an extremely valuable tool for manipulating focus.

To make matters more confusing though, smaller apertures have bigger numbers and extend the depth of field. For example, with an aperture setting of between ƒ16 ~ ƒ32 you can expect a very wide depth of field. Wider apertures conversely have smaller numbers and render narrower depths of field. Extremely fast — and expensive — lenses might have a maximum aperture setting of ƒ1.2 though consumer level zoom lenses typically start at around ƒ3.5 ~ ƒ4.5.

This terminology and the interplay between DOF and ƒ-stop, a measure of aperture size, gives newbies trouble so I’ll put it in an easy to read chart:

Aperture Size Example ƒ-stop DOF

Wide open ƒ4.5 Narrow

Stopped down [tiny] ƒ22 Wide

In this assignment you’ll need two or three pieces of fruit [or toys, or knickknacks], a flat surface with plenty of bright light to work on such is a table, the floor or even the ground. Place the chosen subjects in a line at different distances directly in front of the camera. How far away from the camera and how far apart your subjects should be will depend on the lens that you are using. Try setting the first one a meter from the camera and the other two at half meter intervals beyond it.

Check your camera manual to find out where your Depth of Field Preview button is. It’s usually somewhere on the front of the camera to the right of the lens. You’ll find this button quite useful.

Select a telephoto or zoom lens with a focal length of between 100 and 200 mm. Manipulating aperture has little discernible effect with wide angle optics. The longer the focal length, the more pronounced the changes in DOF will be when aperture setting is changed.

Set your camera exposure mode on Aperture Priority [A] and use the command dial to stop down all the way so that the aperture is as tiny as possible. Next, line the subjects up and focus on the closest one. Push the Depth of Field Preview button and observe how dark everything becomes. That’s because the tiny hole only lets through a limited amount of light. Also observe how focused the second and third subjects are.

Now, open the aperture up completely. Push the Depth of Field Preview button again and note that the second and third subjects have become brighter but blurrier.

Now take a series of pictures at these settings: wide open, ƒ5.6, ƒ8, ƒ11, ƒ16, ƒ22, ƒ32 and fully stopped down if your aperture gets any smaller. A tripod can be helpful here but it’s not essential. When finished, load the photos onto your computer and take a look at the results. In each case the focus was on the first subject but notice how differently the second and third subjects appear depending on the aperture setting. This is an extremely useful tool.

Once you’ve grasped the techniques of manipulating depth of field take this new skill to the street to practice. A graveyard is an excellent place to try out this skill using headstones as a subject matter. Parking meters, fences, light poles and cars in a parking lot are all useful as subjects for practising the manipulation of depth of field.

A narrow depth of field [wide aperture] is useful here for obliterating background spectators and separating the two Celtic dancers as they share a glance. Fully stopped down, this photo would have ended in the garbage heap, being too busy to clearly distinguish important subject elements.

Minimum depth of field, shot at ƒ5.6, separates the spider from the background yet provides enough information to distinguish the stalks of bamboo. Contrast between the dark spider and the bright bamboo is essential to make this photo work.

A modest depth of field — aperture ƒ8 — renders the juvenile eagle’s beak, eye, body and left wing sharp while blurring the right wing. That the tips of the left wing exhibit motion blur even though this image was shot at 1/1000th of a second attests to the sheer power and speed of these raptors in flight.

Close cropping makes it clear that the farmhand is the main subject in this photograph of the cranberry harvest on Barnston Island. The uncluttered background allows a somewhat wider depth of field as achieved with the narrow aperture setting of ƒ11. This choice helps to delineate the tiny fruit in the immediate background while still tapering off to a blurry vermilion gradient.

Note here that manipulating depth of field with wide angle optics is not possible. From the verdant foreground to the distant horizon everything is sharply focused no matter which aperture setting we select. Taken at 1/320th of a second at ƒ11 with a 10.5mm full frame fisheye lens.

All photographs were taken by Brian Grover. To browse more images visit my photo gallery here: Brian Grover Photography.

#23 A Shadow World <<->> #25 The Rule of Thirds

The danger in teaching rules of composition is that some will come to think that the rules must be strictly enforced. Nothing could be further from the truth. The rule of thirds is an age old compositional tool for laying out two-dimensional space. The rule of thirds should be seen merely as a starting place. Feel free to twist it and bend it and break it at will. Doing so will result in superior photographs.
Simply put, divide any rectangle into thirds both horizontally and vertically. Where the horizontals and verticals intersect are positions of heightened impact. Let’s call them “hotspots”. Placing compositional elements in one, two and even three of these hotspots usually leads to a more balanced and striking composition. Using all four intersections usually doesn’t work, resulting in a muddle.

The rule of thirds: placement of subject where the thirds intersect can add to impact to your photos.

In this assignment, head out into your neighbourhood and photograph anything and everything using the rule of thirds. Look for opportunities to compose a single subject juxtaposed with an empty background. Then try two subjects, juxtaposed with each other across one of the diagonals. After that, try placing a single subject across both hotspots on either the right or the left-hand side of the frame. Then make it complicated and try to fill three hotspots. Look for ways to keep the background clean and limit distractions.

This photo of Filipino smelt fishermen in Vancouver’s Stanley Park is almost compositionally identical to the next two photos though the subjects are quite diverse. The subjects in all three images are placed in both left hand hotspots while the opposing right hand hotspots are left open.

A temple granny at Kyoto’s Tofukuji Temple sweeps up leaves on a warm fall day. Note that the rule of thirds is just one of the tools in your bag of tricks now. Among the topics we’ve looked at through this series of assignments, this photograph incorporates backlighting, the considered placement of shadows and timing. All of these elements come together to create a “keeper”. Like the traditional oil painter, a photographer has a full palette from which to create each image.

An egret in Kyoto’s Kamo Gawa occupies the two left-hand hotspots. Note how the right side is not really blank. Instead it’s filled with non-distracting elements which are just as essential to a complete composition. In this case, the bird is balanced against the wildly dancing froth which adds to the overall image without competing with the main subject.

This photo, taken in a levee in California, suffers from almost perfect composition. As a result the image seems contrived and static, like a rule-bound painting out of the 19th Century. With the heavy foreground element placed in the lower left hotspot balanced across the diagonal against the attractively leaning tree in the top right hotspot, and echoed in the distant ridgeline, there’s little room left for movement in the tightly structured space. This demonstrates how strict adherence to compositional rules will put your art in a straitjacket.

All photographs were taken by Brian Grover. To browse more images visit my photo gallery here: Brian Grover Photography.

#24 Depth of Field <<->> #26 Parting Shot