Fun experiment: In-camera multiple exposures

I haven't post anything here in a long time largely because I've begun writing a new book and so have been spending a lot of time doing research. Also, July was so godawful hot here in New England that I couldn't work in my office (which has no a/c).  I have been shooting a little, mostly experimenting with different creative techniques. The shot here is the result of an in-camera triple exposure of several different bottles and a blue wine glass (shot in natural light on my back porch). The multiple exposures are pretty simple on my Nikon D90--you just set it to the multiple-exposure mode (in the menus) and then tell it how many exposures you're going to make. The camera automatically adjusts the exposure based on the number of exposures you're using to make one frame.

In the old days (film) you had to trick the camera into making in-camera multiples by pressing in the film rewind button so that the film didn't advance when you cocked the shutter and  you had to be bery careful to keep the tension on the film tight or it shifted slightly and  you ended up with overlapping frame. Using digital cameras to make multis is certainly world's easier! All that I did between exposures was to change the composition or zoom the lens or slightly shift my angle of view. This shot is pretty much right out of the camera--that green background color is just the green of my backyard. See if your camera has the mode, it's a blast.

Mute Swans Struggle to Survive in Connecticut

The other day I was sitting down by the river with a friend and a family of swans glided up to where we were sitting. I was really surprised to see this brood of 14 cygnets bracketed by the two parents. The  trouble was that they came so close I couldn't widen my 70-300mm zoom out wide enough to take in the whole family--I had to cut the adults in half. Kind of looks like you could join the two adults up to make one complete swan. But it's OK, I just wanted a snapshot to record this nice family. Normally swans lay odd-numbers of eggs, so I was surprised to see an even number of babies. Perhaps something happened to one, or perhaps there was a straggler that I didn't see.

There used to be a ton of swans near me in Connecticut, but the state passed an "egg addling" law that allows for the shaking of swan eggs to destroy the babies. This is done because the duck hunters complained about the way that swans "attacked" the ducks they were hunting. This from the people that want to shoot the ducks and eat them.

It sickens me that the state took the side of the hunters and not the swans. The year before the law passed I would commonly see dozens of swans in a 10 mile drive up the river. Now I see almost none. It struck me as odd (very odd) that the year that the bill was passed, suddenly dozens of adult swans also disappeared. What happened to them? Swans don't migrate, so where did all of the adults go?

It's a damn shame when the lives of such beautiful animals are wiped out so that a tiny group of people can have their selfish way. Thousands of people are denied the joy of seeing these majestic and beautiful birds so that a handful of hunters won't have to deal with swans. (And hunters will tell you that swans are not a native species--but neither are the starlings in your backyard!) And, by the way, I am *not* an opponent of hunting for those who use the food to feed their families--but I am vehemently against an entire population of swans being destroyed when there is no hard science to back up the claims of the damage they are supposed to cause. And, as any biologist will tell you, when you try to wipe out a species like this in a limited area the breeding goes into overdrive. The egg-addling program is creating the problem they were seeking to solve.

I'd like to see the numbers of how many swans are left in Connecticut and the rest of New England but because of the economy there is probably no staff collecting this important data. If you happen to know someone who is going to school for wildlife biology, perhaps you could suggest a swan study as a class project.

Greg Hartford's Acadia Magic

If you've been thinking of taking a summer vacation in New England but haven't decided on a destination yet, let me be the first to suggest a visit to Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Acadia was the first first national park east of the Mississippi and it's really the crown jewel of wild New England places. The park includes a 27-mile scenic drive that provides some of the most spectacular, rugged and pristine ocean views anywhere on the planet. From sandy beaches to sheer granite cliffs, this park is amazing and the drive will provide a front-row seat to all of this beauty.

One of the nice things about the drive is that there are lots of places to pull over so that you can get out and explore and take pictures to your heart's content. You can really travel at your own pace--even when it's relatively crowded (and it is pretty busy in summer, trust me). If you want to leave the crowds behind, however, there are also 45 miles of "Carriage" roads that are open to bikers and hikers, as well as another 115 miles of hiking trails. The vehicle fee to get into the park is just $20/week--a bargain.

Photographer Greg Hartford has produced a wonderful site about the park called AcadiaMagic and it's the perfect place to start planning your trip. Greg is a lifelong resident of Maine and has spent much of his photo career capturing amazing photos of Acadia. Greg's photos are just beautiful and they'll give you a great appreciation for the beauty of Acadia. In addition to all of the stunning photography, Greg has also put together an extremely informative site for travelers--easily the most comprehensive site about Acadia on the web. There is a ton of information on dining, lodging, shopping and sightseeing.

If Greg's photos don't inspire you to want to visit Acadia, nothing will. I'm not sure if he gives private photo tours or not, but you might want to ask him--contact info is on the site. (Photo courtesy of Greg Hartford. Copyright 2013 Greg Hartford)

The Peaceful Beauty of Twilight

I live near the water and twilight is one of my favorite times of day--it's a very peaceful, calm time of day and the breezes have died down a bit so that the water surfaces are generally much more calm. Also, after the sun has set there is often a pretty afterglow in the sky. In this scene you can just see slight tinges of pink. That pink was actually stronger a few minutes before, but I wasn't set up in time to capture it. A friend of mine on Facebook commented on the geometry of this shot and I have to agree that when I shot it I placed that larger foreground boat carefully between the others. I think that being careful not to let the boats overlap helps to reveal the space of the scene and also helps maintain a feeling of balance

The photo was shot with a Nikon D90 and a 70-300mm f/5.6 Nikkor zoom. The exposure was 1/60 second at f/8, ISO 320. I captured it in both RAW and jpeg, but this is from the jpeg version--I will play with the white balance much more when I work it from the RAW file.

Ferris Wheel Fun at the Carnival

If there is one thing in the world that I'm highly attracted to visually, it's the combination of color, light and motion--and nothing combines those three elements better than a Ferris wheel. I've been photographing them since I was a about 16 and stopped one night at a carnival in a nearby town to take some snapshots. While I was shooting, a cop who was patrolling the carnival stopped to chat and asked me what shutter speed I was using. At the time I was just trying to record an image of the wheel and hadn't thought much (or at all) about the motion of the wheel. I was shooting as I always did, just using a shutter speed that was slow enough to record the Ferris wheel when it was stopped--probably 1/30 second or so. This cop (who told me he did a lot of photography for his department--in Shelton, Connecticut, by the way) suggested that since I was using a tripod I should try to capture some motion shots and experiment with long exposures--a second or more. And so I did. I shot a whole roll (Ektachrome slides in those days) of photos at between one and four or five seconds.

When I got that film back from the lab, I was completely blown away. Instead of just still shots of a pretty ride, I had these intense swirls of color and light. Wow, cool! Many of the shots were grossly overexposed (what I wouldn't have given for an LCD back then!). Ever since then I've been drawn like a moth to the light at carnivals and I think of that nice cop every time I shoot ride photos. Many of these photos have been published in my books and, in fact, the cover of my book Exposure Photo Workshop (the first edition) features a motion shot of a Ferris wheel (the 2nd edition features a shot of a different carnival ride).

Getting shots like the ones here is easy--and I didn't even use a tripod for the second shot, I was just resting the camera (a Nikon D90) on the roof of my friend Pam's car. The exposure for the second shot was about 1/8 second at f/8 and for the first shot above it was a full second at f/22, on a Manfrotto tripod. I shot both nights at ISO 200 to preserve image quality (though I did bump up the ISO for a few shots as an experiment). I shot hundreds of photos over the course of the two nights, endlessly experimenting with shutter speeds. There are three things that will effect the outcome of your photos: the shutter speed that you're using, the  speed of the wheel and the color patterns since the lights are almost always changing. Also, these days one wonderful change in the wheels is that most use LED lights which are vastly brighter and more colorful--a really tremendous improvement for photographers. I also did some "zooming" shots both nights, racking the zoom during the long exposures and I'll post a few of those in a few days.

Finally, one thing you should do is experiment with your white balance. I set my white balance to tungsten lighting and then used the color picker graphic (available on most dSLR cameras) to custom set the balance. I had to play with the setting many times to get it to record the colors of the wheel accurately (and you're never really sure until you see the images on a bigger screen--which is partly why I went back the second night, to work more with white balance). Of course, I always shoot in RAW (and jpeg simultaneously most of the time) so that I can play with the white balance after the fact, as well. Both of the images here are exactly as they came out of the camera--I did nothing to the color balance other than set the black point for the background using curves (and you should be sure you have a good rich Dmax to set off the colors nicely). They are not sharpened either, though you could do this to crisp up the edges if you wanted.

Fun stuff, right? Well summer is here, so get our your tripod and make sure your batteries are charged (long exposures use a lot of battery power) and go have fun at the carnival.

Happy 94th Birthday to Folk Legend Pete Seeger

The wondrous singer/songwriter/activist/storyteller/ecologist Pete Seeger turned 94 on Friday May 3rd. Happy Birthday to you Pete! Thanks for all you've done for music, for art, for the Earth and for humanity.