Archive for the ‘Tips and Tricks’ Category

Touring The City

27

Mar

2010

… or what to do on a cold day before year’s end.

Dear Mr. Blog,
I’d like to apologize for having neglected you so long. You have been a wonderful friend in these hard times and I hope our friendship will continue despite my poor interest in you. lol Okay folks, just trying to be funny but here is a short wrap up of how the past year ended for me. I did not realize until now that I have not written anything about my tour through the city of Dresden with David Bank from London and Matthias from Berlin.

“Dresden at Dusk”
Dresden at Dusk
Canon Rebel XSi with Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 @ 11mm, 8s, f/11, iso 100

David (the other one – not me!) was nice enough to drop by for a day worth of shooting in my current living room, so to speak. Being an architect by day and a photographer by night (or rather the hour before and after sunset, which is often referred to as Blue Hour, but more on that later.); his portfolio is filled with stunning cityscapes from all over the world. Names of cities that make every avid traveler’s heart beat twice as fast: Beijing, London, Madrid, San Francisco, Paris, Chicago, Shanghai, New York and Hong Kong to name just a few. You can check out his fantastic work on his flickr stream as his website is currently in a redesign state.

Alright, now let’s get serious about the photos and the blue hour. Our little group met at what is easily defined as Dresden’s icon: the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady). The light was just shifting to an overcast gray but fortunately David and Matthias were able to grab some of the finest light of the day before I arrived to meet up with them. After a brief overview of what I had in mind regarding places to shoot, we made our way to the IT faculty of the TU Dresden which I thought would be an interesting subject for us to shoot. Luckily, we were able to get in and the architect in our group appreciated the contemporary design quite a bit. Yes, even the bathrooms are lime green. No, I didn’t get a shot from this very place but others sure did.

“The Green Chamber”
The Green Chamber
Canon Rebel XSi with Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 @ 11mm, 0.8s, f/10, iso 100

After exploring the building it was about time to get back into the historic city center, rushing past my beloved Starbucks and through masses of tourists which always seem to be there. In the coldest days, in the rainiest and even at 3 in the morning but that’s another story. We made it to Bruehl’s Terrace which should be the main spot for the evening, just in time for the beginning of the blue hour. (See the first picture of this post.) The blue hour is the magical transition from day to night and vice versa, after the sun has set or before the sun is about to rise and the sky is dyed in a steel blue curtain. For us photographers, this is the perfect time of the day to shoot cityscapes but don’t get me wrong, we also appreciate a nice sunset (which is just about to happen as I type this) or sunrise.

“Gold and Black” (… and a blue hour sky.)
Gold and Black
Canon Rebel XSi with Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 @ 12mm, 8s, f/13, iso 100

The blue hour, also known as twilight or l’heure bleue, makes up for stunning city photography experiences. You can get elements in one shot that seem to be impossible at other times of the day. One of the major aspects of a great composition can be light trails from cars or trams passing by. You can create a sense of motion and these light trails can also be used as lines to lead the eye of the viewer through the scene.

“Passing By”
Passing By
Canon Rebel XSi with Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 @ 12mm, 10s, f/10, iso 100

Such as in the shot above. I studied scene for quite a while before setting up for the shot and therefore knowing exactly where the street car would pass and where the lights of it would be. I composed it to have the majestic church sitting two-thirds horizontally, the golden glowing tower of the Dresden castle on the one-third axis vertically and the right face of the church on the two-thirds axis while the cars and tram passing are in some sort of “C”-shape to create impact. I have chosen a longer exposure than it would be necessary by adding a circular polarizer to the front of my lens to get longer light trails and to blur the detail of the cars completely to create this see-through appearance and therefore not to lose any detail in the historic architecture.

After we covered all the major sights of the city center, it was time for the last spot for the day. The view towards the city made famous by Bernardo Bellotto, better know as Canaletto, a Venetian painter from the 18th century. Night set and we were in desperate need of food and a cool one to call it a day.

See you next time with some more winterly shots to complete the winter wrap up. I promise that it won’t be too long.

Until then, happy shooting and never stop exploring.

David

Fall Color Report

08

Nov

2009

In today’s post I plan to cover the essential gear you need in your camera bag when you head out into the woods to catch the colors at their peak and hope to mix it up with some shots and maybe a little story too, but I’ll come to that later – eventually.

This year, fall did something weird with us. At first glance, I was pretty sure we skipped it completely to head straight into the cold and snowy winter which is certainly one of the most interesting and challenging seasons for us nature and landscape photographers. Not only the snow and freezing temperatures make hiking more exhausting than it is already during the rest of the year, it also needs another kind of vision because the areas you know might look totally different under a 4 or 6 feet snow cover. However, the first day of fall was here and I found myself surrounded with the first two feet snow of the year and I knew the most scenic area would be the 4000ft. peak of the Fichtelberg where winter was already in full force. (Pictures to follow in another post.) Back in my neck of the woods, the snow was already melting and to everyone’s surprise most of the leaves in the lower lying areas where still on the trees. The next weekend I packed my gear for a three hour tour in some local forests.

The first image for today was taken on a steep slope where the forest is more open than in most parts in the area. The warm afternoon sun was blasting through the tree tops of spruces, birches and a few pines which are a really rare treat to the eye. I used a small aperture to allow a longer exposure to give the foliage a somewhat abstract look while the wind was blowing through. Click on the image for the full view.

Golden Autumn

Canon Rebel XSi with Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 @ 11mm, 2sec, f/22.

Essential for this particular image was a circular polarizer and a 3-stop soft-edge gradual neutral density filter to balance the bright sky and light hitting the upper leaves and the relatively dark foreground.

I especially find the circular polarizer extremely helpful for fall foliage images. Not only does the CPL remove reflections from the water surface and allows you to see to the bottom of a stream, it also cuts through haze and mist, which you often find in fall and it removes the glare from the foliage which will otherwise make it look dull and without the punch required to make an image really work and leave an impression on the viewer.

Without a doubt, a set of gradual neutral density filters can also be of a great help for any scene where you encounter a bright background and a relatively dark foreground. In order to achieve a balanced and well exposed photograph, you basically rely on them if you do not plan to spend a lot of time in front of a computer screen. For beginners a set of a 2-stop hard-edge and a 3-stop soft-edge should handle most scenes quite well. I’ll cover the idea behind neutral density filters in a future post more extensively. If you have any questions though, please feel free to leave a comment with your question.

The next image is called “Dead Warriors” since those old spruces lined up there in such a dense manner, it seemed impossible to break through the defensive line to the magical place that lies behind. Or it might just have been more of the impassible thicket. I did not put to much thought into that and wandered on. Click on the image for full view.

Dead Warriors

Canon Rebel XSi with Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 @ 16mm, 0.6sec, f/11.

Last for today is a little cascading waterfall which I shot already the year before but the spring flooding changed the layout quite a bit and it was rather hard to find a good composition. A little upstream I saw these bright colored leaves swirling around a little pool and set up tripod. A 20-second exposure was needed to ensure a proper exposed and lit scene. Click on the image for full view.

Tumbling Leaves

Canon Rebel XSi with Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 @ 11mm, 20sec, f/8.

I’ll be off to a nice little stream tomorrow to catch the remaining color in the trees before the winter really kicks in. Stay tuned for part two of the report.

David