Tribute to Paris

Taken during the "Blue Hour" twilight ~ © Royce Bair

Our hearts and prayers go out for the people of France!

I took this photo last Fall during a workshop I was co-teaching called, “3 Nights in Paris”. The Fontaine du Trocadéro is in the foreground. Taken with a Canon 5D Mk3 and a 24mm Canon lens (f/8, 1-sec, ISO 100).

Utah West Desert Photo Walk

Part of last night's group "riding" our abandon, graffiti-painted school bus (Robin, Sandy, Audie, Brannon, Heike, Paul and Brian) ~ © Royce Bair

Free NightScape Photo Event: Last night was another one of the free NightScape Photowalk events that I'm trying to do across the country. Although last night's event was limited to just 10 people, other NightScapeWalks venues have had room for up to 100 participants.

Location: This old, abandon bus is located about 50 miles west of Salt Lake City, just off exit 70 of I-80, near the ghost town of Delle, Utah. In this map, you'll see the bus located about 900 feet southeast of the gas station.

Sunset shots: We arrived about an hour before sunset, in order to get our bearings, and took several daytime photos...

Blue Hour: Our main purpose was to do night photography. To maximize our time, we did "Blue Hour" photography during the end of the Civil Twilight period. In order to extend this narrow, 20-minute window (it's really not an "hour"), into 30 minutes of shooting time, we first shot from the west side of the bus, looking east; and, then switched to the east side of the bus, looking west. Lights inside and outside the bus had to be adjusted in their intensity as the twilight dimmed.

Milky Way: By 6:45 PM the Astronomical Dusk had arrived, and the stars were really starting to pop. Although the brightest portion of the Milky Way, the central bulge, has rotated below the horizon at this season of the year, there is still a lot of Milky Way to see, especially the Great Rift or the Dark River, as the ancients used to call it. Once again, the inside lights had to be dimmed even further, to match the intensity of the starlight. We did not use any outside lighting, as we already had plenty of light pollution coming from the gas station, about 900 feet (274 m.).

"Photo Walkers" choose their angle for aligning the old bus with the Milky Way. The lights in the bus have been dimmed to match the starlight, and the colorful gels have been removed. The only outside light is coming from two sodium vapor street lamps, located about 900 feet to the right, at the Delle gas station (which is also giving the orange-red glow in the right side of the sky) ~ © Royce Bair

Post processing contrast added to the sky, and a darker exposure of the bus was blended (via a Photoshop layer) into the image. This photo was actually taken a week earlier during a scouting trip ~ © Royce Bair

You can see more photos from the participants of this photo walk by going to this Meetup page.

An invitation: I invite photographers everywhere to suggest future photo walk venues (these are free events) by tagging your favorite astro-landscapes with the hashtag: #NightScapeWalk — on Instagram, Facebook or Google+. Please include the location of your NightScape and any other interesting background information in your photo description. To qualify, locations should be within 50 miles (80 km) or 90 minutes drive time (which ever is less) from a major city or metropolitan area (over 100,000 population). You can also suggest a location on my NightScape Meetup page.

Future NightScapeWalk venues I'm considering for January and February 2016 are some unique desert locations near Tucson, AZ and San Diego, CA. I welcome your suggestions for March. By April, my private workshop season begins, and I'll have less time for these free events.

Inside Double Arch

Ultra wide angle view of Milky Way stars through a light painted Double Arch, Arches N.P. ~ © Royce Bair 2014

Daylight view of our children
inside Double Arch, circa 1983

Three Decades Inside Double Arch: Although my family lives in Salt Lake City, Arches National Park was our vacation playground when my kids were growing up, and Double Arch was their favorite place to play. It's only natural that when I started to experiment with night photography and light painting in the early 1980's that Arches NP would be my canvas of choice.

In my early years of magazine and commercial photography, I wanted a graphic way to show clients that I could bring the studio (and its lighting) on location —providing ultimate control. If I could artistically light some of the world's natural features at night, it would indicate that I could do something similar for my client's needs.

Building that early portfolio was a family affair. My sons accompanied me the during the daylight planning and positioning of lights, as well as helping to firing strobes at night. They clicked the camera's shutter for me at my radio commands, carried equipment up and down rocky trails, and rarely complained that their hands were cold, or that it was past their bedtime.

Blue Hour to Starry Nights: In those early years, film provided considerable limitations for night photography. ISO 400 color film had grain similar to the look of today's ISO 3200 digital noise. It was impossible in those days to photograph the stars as points of light —film just was not fast enough, so one had to be content with star trails or twilight photography during the blue hour.

Nautical Twilight w/light painting

N. Twilight inside Double Arch

Calculating light painting exposure in the early 1980's was also extremely difficult as there was no instantaneous image feedback from an LCD in those days of film! Lighting exposure had to be calculated mathematically with flash guide numbers and distance. And, because most of my exposures were 10 minutes long, starting at the end of the Blue Hour (about 50 minutes after sunset), I was only able to take one photograph a night. There was no chance for the bracketing of exposures or trying different angles or compositions. Color transparency film had a narrow latitude of only one-half of an exposure stop, so one had to be extremely accurate.

A light-painted view from outside Double Arch,
taken at twilight, during the Blue Hour

Digital vs. Film:  Digital photography has much more latitude and the advances in digital imaging sensors has allowed for amazingly results, even at ISO's of 6400 and above —enabling one to shoot deeper into the night, use short exposure times to capture the stars as points of light, rather than streaking star trails. These greater digital sensor capabilities have also eliminated the need for high-powered studio lights. With today's higher ISO's one can now use small, battery powered LED lights to do what once required me to employ a group of "Sherpa" sons to help carry the powerful studio lighting into the mountains! Today, one of my adult sons, Chris, continues to assist me on my Arches workshops.

Join me April 21-24 for our Arches Workshop

Royce's 2015 NightScape Workshop Schedule

Royce's 2015 Multi-City NightScape Seminar Tour

Hand-held Blue Hour Photography

Morning "Blue Hour" in Varenna, Italy - taken from a rocking boat on Lake Como ~ © Royce Bair
Canon 5D Mark III, EF24-70mm f/2.8L @ 28mm, f/2.8, 1/60 second, ISO 3200 (click to enlarge)

The Blue Hour is a period when the sun is between 4º and 6º degrees below the horizon. This period rarely lasts more than about 20-40 minutes (not an hour), depending on where you are in the world and the time of the year. This special twilight period happens both in the morning, before the sun rises, and after the sun sets. There are several apps that can calculate this period for you. My favorite is the BlueHourSite, where you can get the info for free (they also have an app for your smartphone). The special quality of the BH allows you to get the look of a night photo, but still have enough ambient light to see some shadow detail, like in the above photo I took two weeks ago in Italy. If your exposure is done correctly, street and building lights glow warmly against the dark blue sky, without blowing out, like they do in a late night scene.

Regular Blue Hour Shooting Recipe: Most Blue Hour photograph is done using a tripod and a medium-length time exposure. A typical recipe is to set your ISO to 100, and your White Balance to "Daylight", or about 5000ºK to 5500ºK (this helps to accentuate the bluish color of the sky and give the artificial lights a warmer, contrasting color. Use the Aperture Priority shooting mode, and set your aperture to a medium f-stop, i.e. f/8. Use your exposure compensate wheel to underexpose your image at a -1/3 to -2/3 stop Exposure Value (remember, you're trying to achieve a "night-time" look, so you have to fool your in-camera exposure meter a little). Let your camera pick the shutter speed. A typical shutter speed will come in at 2 to 15 seconds, depending on whether you are at the beginning or at the end of the Blue Hour. This formula works well for most landscape type subjects like the one below, or this Eiffel Tower photo:

Notre Dame Cathedral during the evening Blue Hour (camera mounted to a tripod) ~ © Royce Bair
Canon 5D Mark III, EF24-70mm f/2.8L @ 35mm, f/8, 10 seconds, ISO 100

But, what happens when you cannot use a tripod, like in the top photo, or when your subject is moving, like in this street scene I shot in Paris last month?

Rainy Night in Paris Street Scene (hand-held) ~ © Royce Bair (click to enlarge)
Canon 5D Mark III, EF24-70mm f/2.8L @ 68mm, f/2.8, 1/160 second, ISO 3200

Here's my Hand Held Recipe for Blue Hour Photography:

1. White Balance: If you're shooting landscapes or cityscapes, like the top photo, stick with Daylight White Balance. If you're shooting street scenes, like the one above, set to Auto White Balance. Various light sources can be pretty bizarre —auto will help to average things out.
2. Use the Aperture Priority shooting mode (experienced shooters may want to use the Manual Mode listed below).
3. Shoot at your fastest (widest) aperture, i.e. f/2.8.
4. In street scenes, use a wide angle lens where possible, and move in close to your subjects. Although wide angle lenses can distort, they can also produce greater perspective drama when you move in close to your subjects, or to a secondary foreground subject that draws attention to your main subject. Wide angle lenses also have greater depth of focus than normal or telephoto lenses.
5. Higher ISO's. Use an ISO that is high enough to give you a relatively fast shutter. Shutter speed is the key to sharpness.* Try to achieve a shutter speed that is at least twice the focal length of your lens. For instance, if you are using a 24mm lens, a shutter speed of two times 24 (48) is a minimum. The nearest shutter speed to 48 is 60, or 1/60 of a second. A shutter speed of 1/125 would be even better (I can easily hold my camera steady at 1/60 when I concentrate, but not when I'm excited). A shutter speed of 1/125 will also help to stop the action of your subjects. So, 2X the focal length of your lens is the minimum, 4X is the preference.
6. Use a lens with image stabilization, where possible. IS will often allow you to get hand-held shots at speeds that are one to two shutter speeds below what you can shoot without IS. This is especially helpful with normal and medium telephoto lenses. Keep in mind that IS will minimize hand-held camera shake, but it will have no effect on your subject's movement. If you are shooting people in the Blue Hour, you'll often need a shutter speed of 1/125 second or above.

*High ISO's and wide-open apertures (the smallest f-stop numbers) allow you to produce the highest shutter speeds. You may have been told that high ISO's are too noisy (gritty), and that wide-open apertures are the poorest setting for optical sharpness and depth of focus. Both are partly true. However, a fast shutter speed will allow something in your photo to be sharp (wherever you have your focus set). If you stop down your aperture and use a slower shutter speed, more will be in focus, but it will probably be blurry due to camera shake or subject movement. Raise your ISO and use a wider aperture in order to get the faster shutter speeds. High ISO noise can be corrected with software. There is no software fix for blurred images due to camera or subject movement!

Manual Exposure Mode: All of the combinations below will give you the same exposure. Use them as a starting point. The exposures combinations given are for midway through the Blue Hour (adjust your shutter speed or ISO as the Blue Hour progresses):

• 100 ISO - f/8 - 4 seconds
• 100 ISO - f/5.6 - 2 seconds
• 100 ISO - f/4 - 1 second
• 100 ISO - f/2.8 - 1/2 second
• 200 ISO - f/2.8 - 1/4 second
• 400 ISO - f/2.8 - 1/8 second
• 800 ISO - f/2.8 - 1/15 second
• 1600 ISO - f/2.8 - 1/30 second
• 3200 ISO - f/2.8 - 1/60 second
• 6400 ISO - f/2.8 - 1/125 second

Don't be afraid to use the higher ISO's. ISO's of 1600 to 6400 can produce remarkably low noise images with today's modern, APS-C and full-frame digital sensors (used in almost all DSLR's), especially with the latest software, i.e. Adobe Camera Raw (the noise reduction engine within Lightroom and as a plug-in for Photoshop) combined with Google/NIK's Dfine 2 for additional noise reduction.

A wide aperture (f/2.2) and a high ISO (1600) allowed me to shoot this spontaneous street action
(without a tripod) during a "Two Nights in Paris" workshop with Drake Busath, where I was the
guest instructor. Although the Depth of Focus at f2.2 (even with a wide angle lens) is limited,
what is in focus is tack sharp due to the fast, 1/250 second shutter speed.

This Paris street scene was shot after the BH, but it shows the effective use of a fast wide angle lens
and a high ISO of 1600. Shooting at f/2.2 with this 24mm lens (Canon EF24mm f/1.4L II) gives me
much more Depth of Focus than I'd get with a normal or medium telephoto lens. © Royce Bair

ENLARGED from above image: Wide angle lenses have great DOF, and modern digital sensors,
coupled with good noise reduction software allow one to use much higher ISO's than
our old film cameras or earlier digital cameras (click to enlarge). © Royce Bair

Use promo code "nightcape" to save 20% off premium stock photography at prime.500px.com

Paris at Night

A "blue hour" time exposure of the Eiffel Tower behind the fountains at the Trocadero Gardens ~ © Royce Bair

I just returned from three weeks in Europe, where I worked with Drake Busath as his guest instructor. This section of Drake's Italy Workshops & Village Tours included a week in the Loire Valley and Two Nights in Paris. Although Paris is too light polluted to do a starry night sky photo, I was looking forward to doing some Blue Hour shots, especially since this term originated in France.

The Blue Hour comes from a French expression (l'heure bleue), which refers to twilight, the period each morning and evening where there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness. The time is considered special because of the quality of the light at this time period.

In the above shot, we were about 20 minutes away from the best Blue Hour period, when the fountains (the Fontaine de Varsovie) and the 20 big water cannons started up. They stay on for about ten minutes, so were still about 10 minutes away from the peak of the Blue Hour when I took this shot —and they would not go on again until after the Blue Hour. Before the BH, the scene is too flat, and after the BH, the blackness of the night is too contrasty to see foreground detail or any color in the sky.

Although the timing on the above scene was not perfect, I was able to use a steep Photoshop "S" curve (in a"Curves" adjustment layer) to help simulate a more perfect Blue Hour. This curve also included clipping of the highlights on the right side of the histogram.

The original scene on the left was too flat because we were still about 10 minutes away from the best
Blue Hour period. By adding a steep "S" curve adjustment (that included some highlight clipping on the right
side of the histogram), I was able to obtain a more perfect Blue Hour image. ~ © Royce Bair (click to enlarge)

Use promo code "nightcape" to save 20% off premium stock photography at prime.500px.com

Blue Hour Light Painting in Grafton, Utah

Grafton Schoolhouse in Grafton, Utah ~ © Royce Bair (click to enlarge)
Canon 5D MkIII • EF24-70mm f/2.8 lens @ 34mm • f/5.6, 25 sec, ISO 200 • 5 lights

Last week, Phill Monson assisted me in a "NightScape" workshop in Zion National Park. The weather for the third night was overcast, so we scheduled a "blue hour" light painting session in the ghost town of Grafton, Utah.

Location and History: Grafton began as a pioneer farming community that was first settled in 1859. Continued flooding of the nearby Virgin River caused most of the families to resettle in locations on the other side of the river, and by 1944 Grafton became a ghost town. The nearest inhabited town is Rockville, and Zion National Park is only about eight miles to the northeast. The adobe schoolhouse, in the above photo, was built in 1886. It was also used as a church and a public meeting place.

Light Painting: I set up a main light about 100 feet to the right. This was an 85-watt Westcott circular fluorescent bulb (5500º K, producing an equivalent of 300 watts). It was placed in an old, 18" Smith-Victor reflector (that had been spray painted with metallic gold paint to warm the color balance), and powered by a Vagabond Mini Lithium power source. The fill lights, on the left side, were a Calumet LED Light Panel (with a warming filter) and a Coleman-style LED lantern (the GE Chromalit 3D). All of these lights were stationary, and placed on light stands, except the lantern, which was on the ground next to the light panel. Phill provided the handheld backlight to the bell tower with a Black and Decker lithium halogen spotlight. I lighted the inside of the school through a back window, by painting the ceiling with a handheld Brinkmann Max Million III Rechargeable Spotlight (Q-Beam). Both of us were standing behind the schoolhouse. The stationary lights remained on for the full 25-seconds camera exposure, but the handheld lights were on for only eight seconds.

Faux HDR: Almost everyone knows that a high dynamic range (HDR) image can be created by blending three or more exposure value (EV) images within Photoshop or software, i.e. Photomatix Pro. This is difficult to do when you are shooting a light-painted scene. An alternative to three or more different camera exposures is to produce those from the camera's RAW file, in post production. Some call this "faux-HDR". Others may call it "false" or "fake" HDR, but the results are very close to regular HDR imaging.

To produce the above image, I made three different exposure value images from the camera raw image: the unadjusted image (0 EV), another that one-stop underexposed (-1 EV), and the third one-stop overexposed (+1 EV). I could have gone 2-stops either way, but one stop was sufficient for this image.

Three exposure values from the same camera raw image (cropped for this demo).

Additional Blending: The three exposures were then combined in Photomatix Pro to produce a natural HDR image ("Natural Fusion"). As you can see (below), this greatly increase the shadow detail without blowing out the highlights. Wanting to show more of the texture and warmth of the adobe brick, and increase the separation between the roof and the dark blue sky, I choose to produce the more garish, tone-mapped "Painterly 5" version as well. By layering (blending at 50% opacity) the "Painterly 5" version over top of the "Natural Fusion" version, I was able to produce an image that combines the best of both versions, and still retain a more natural look. The building perspective of the final, blended image was then corrected in Photoshop using Edit > Transform > Distort.

The Natural HDR has much more shadow detail than the original exposure.
The tone-mapped HDR ("Painterly 5") has great texture and warmth, but is too garish.
Blending these two HDR versions in Photoshop combines the best of both, and the final result is the top image.

Royce's 2014 Workshop, Lecture & Video Conference Schedule: NightScapeEvents.com
Featured Post: Shooting Stars eBook Review — How to Photograph the Stars and the Moon

'Other World' - Blue Hour Hoodoo Light Painting

Mushroom-shape hoodoos in Goblin Valley ~ © Royce Bair (click to enlarge)
Canon 5D Mk3 • 24mm lens @ f/4.5 • 8 sec • ISO 400

Goblin Valley can seem like another world, especially at night. Add light painting and the fun really begins. This is truly a playground for night photographers. My friend, Steve Bunderson, and I spent two days and nights here last week, and had a blast!

"Blue Hour" Photography: Photographing during the "blue hour" can save-the-day when the weather produces lousy conditions for photography. We had hoped to photograph the hoodoos with a starry night sky. However, the whole day had been very cloudy and overcast. By waiting until about 20-30 minutes after sunset, the sky turned a dramatic, deep blue, and produced just a hint of shadow detail on the landscape. During this narrow window of time, Steve and I performed our magic. Steve operated both of our cameras and shouted out feedback, while I handled the light painting.

Light Painting Techniques: The large hoodoo in the foreground is about 20 feet high (over three times the height of a man). The hoodoo in the background is about 40 feet high, and the butte behind it is about 100 feet high. All were lighted using two hand-held quartz-halogen spotlights, from a distance of about 150 feet to the right of the cameras. The hoodoo in the foreground was lighted with a spotlight set at one-half power, and the background hoodoo was lighted with a second spotlight set at full power —one light in each hand (it's important to keep your hands moving during the camera exposure). Both lights are the Black & Decker Lithium Ion Halogen Rechargeable Spotlights. The glow on the front hoodoo, coming up underneath the "mushroom" is from a third spotlight, which is lying on the ground, behind the hoodoo.

Royce's 2014 Workshop, Lecture & Video Conference Schedule: NightScapeEvents.com
Featured Post: Shooting Stars eBook Review — How to Photograph the Stars and the Moon