Take It or Make It?
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| Flag Garden on Boston Common |
I arrived close to sunset and there were photographers and visitors every where. I scouted around for a bit looking for the composition I wanted but with so many others around it was difficult. I found this spot but decided to come back later. I joined the Meet Up group and spent the next few hours struggling to capture something decent in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. I returned to the Commons around 11pm on my way to the parking garage and luckily found my spot available. There were still a few photographers and visitors but things were looking good for the image I had hoped to create.
One reason I love night photography is the technical challenge of it. Our cameras can do amazing things and their ability to capture the full range of light and shadow has come a long way. In night photography that range is extreme, almost total darkness between the flags to blindingly bright street lamps. The flags were my top priority so I set up my gear, my Nikon D7000 with 18-140mm lens at f/11 and ISO 100 for the cleanest image I could get. I was ready to set my shutter speed and take my picture. The breeze did not cooperate. The darkness did not cooperate. The street lamps did not cooperate.
Long exposure photography is hard.
Highlights get blown out quickly and shadows remain pure black forever. I decided I liked the flags with a 15" exposure but the city sky was grey because of the cloud cover. At 8" the city sky was nice and dark but the flags were, too. In the end I leaned on software to make the image I wanted. No amount of fiddling with a single image got me what I wanted so I turned to GIMP and my limited experience of manually blending images. Luckily, YouTube keeps my history so I could find the useful video tutorial that I return to every time I need to use this technique. In just a matter of minutes I blended my 8" and 15" images and the image I wanted was made.
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