On the Neon Prowl Again...

I've been out on the prowl looking for neon signs again, hopefully to be used in a new book. It's not that easy to find great old neon where I live in Connecticut, but I've always liked this sign in a car dealer's window. I shot it while waiting for Mexican take-out food--the car place is just around the corner from the restaurant. Glad I had the camera with me. I didn't bother to unload a tripod (afraid a cop might ask why I was carrying a big tripod at night in a closed car dealership--you'd be surprised how much suspicion that draws for some crazy reason), but leaned on a handy sawhorse. I shot it with a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom (non-image-stabilized version--wish I could afford one!), but there was plenty of light: shot at IS0 640 1/160 second at f/10. There's an entire tutorial on photographing neon signs on my main site.

By the way, if you're in Connecticut or passing through, the little hole-in-the-wall restaurant is called Milford Pizza and is, oddly enough, a great Mexican restaurant--staffed by a really friendly group of Mexican cooks. It's in a small plaza a block in from the Post Road that you enter from Naugatuck Avenue (yes, by the little Devon Post Office). So that's my restaurant plug.

Here's my new book plug: My new book on Exposure, Exposure Photo Workshop is out and if you're interested in learning more about exposure, I think you'll like the book. It's got more than 300 of my photos and it will help you solve a ton of exposure problems. For under $20 it's a bargain on Amazon, too--it's nearly 350 pages and crammed with info.

Another Great Neon Sign is Gone

Some of you are probably familiar with the shot above--I've used it in at least one of my books and variations of it have been shown on this blog. I also have the shot in my Flickr Photostream and the other day I got a message from Flickr member Rick Ibsen that the sign was destroyed in a winter storm in March of 2010. The motel apparently switched hands around that time also and the sign isn't going to be replaced. Below is a shot of the sign after the storm shot by Rick (for more of Rick's great photos, check out Rick Ibsen's Flickr Photostream).

I always tell my students and readers: when you see something great, shoot it--you never know if you'll get the chance again. It's easy to drive by something neat and say, "Oh, I'll come back and shoot that another time." But fate does not always cooperate so nicely. It will only take five minutes out of your life to shoot something interesting and you'll always be happy that you did--and that goes for old friends, favorite trees and the pear ripening in the morning sun on the windowsill, as well.  Let your camera be your instant journaling machine.

By the way, speaking of old friends (!), if you're looking for some cool books to buy for one of them, check out my photo book suggestions on my main site.

Cool Subject for a Hot Summer's Night

This is been, without question, the hottest summer than I can remember for years. I love heat, so no complaints from me, but living without a/c often sends me out cruising the cool nights seeking a cool breeze. But as any experienced cruiser knows, if you're going to drive around aimlessly, you have to have some sort of destination--however vague--otherwise you're just, well, driving around. One way to feel slightly less useless and still give yourself a nice cooling ride is to look for a good night subject to photograph.

My favorite night subject, of course, is neon. Unfortunately, at least where I live, there's not a lot of really interesting neon out there--but there is some. I actually shot this sign a few summers ago to use in my book Exposure Photo Workshop: Develop Your Digital Photography Talent. It remains one of my favorite local signs (and I drove by last weekend but forgot to even notice what condition it was in) and it's a real throwback to those great 1950's motel signs that you used to see everywhere.

Photographing neon is easy and you can get great shots with any camera. The trick is to fill the frame with just the neon sign and then trust the metered exposure. I shoot in the RAW format 100-percent of the time these days, so I can adjust the exposure and white balance after the fact, which is great. But if you're shooting in jpeg, you can give yourself similar exposure leeway by using the auto-bracketing feature and bracketing exposures by a full stop in either direction. (By the way, if you don't have an auto-bracketing feature, you can just use exposure compensation to add/subtract a stop or more on either side of the metered exposure and you'll get the same result.)

Next time you're suffering through a hot night, toss the tripod in the backseat, load up the camera (don't forget to charge the batteries!) and give yourself a neon challenge. If you don't find a great sign, well, you can always photograph the line at the Dairy Queen. And hey, as long as you're at the Dairy Queen...

Find Funny Signs

For some reason signs always seem to catch my eye when I'm traveling--but then again, I guess that's why people put up signs. Duh! What really catches my eye though are the funny signs. Some signs, like the one for a "new, safe heat treatment" that I found (in English, oddly enough) in Paris is meant to be funny. Paris had had a long, hot summer and the whole country was suffering serious heat problems. This ice cream vendor decided that he had the secret treatment for all of that heat: eat more ice cream (I couldn't agree more).

Other signs are unintentionally funny--like conflicting one-way signs that don't allow you to drive in either direction, or a "Watch Your Step" sign inadvertently posted near the edge of the Grand Canyon. In any case, the key to finding funny sign photos is just to read lots of signs and, of course, having your camera with you!