I’ve already blogged here once about taking sunset photos but after taking this blue hour shot tonight I just had to share how easy this is.

I had to run downtown around 6pm to pick up some fresh oysters from the Fish Market. On the way out the door I grabbed my Pentax K10D, 16-50 f/2.8 DA* (borrowed) and tripod. I made a bee line down 21st Street South (past the Fish Market) to the viaduct that goes over the railroad tracks into downtown. From this elevated vantage point over the tracks I knew I would have a decent view west with enough streetlights for some killer starburst action.

Here’s the set-up for this shot:

• camera mode: MANUAL (you can’t do this in AUTO!)
• aperture: f/22
• shutter speed: 30 seconds
• ISO: 100*
• white balance: AUTO
• flash: OFF (!!)
• IS: OFF
• auto focus: OFF (manually set focus to ∞)
• self timer: ON (2 second delay)
• focal length: widest setting (here: 16mm)
• battery: fully charged (!)

*Nikon users with ISO 200 as the lowest setting may have to back off the shutter to 15-20 seconds.

That’s it. Mount the camera on a tripod, compose the shot, trip the shutter (using the self timer prevents camera shake), step back, and wait. If you time the light right that’s all you’ll ever have to do. The small aperture ensures everything is in focus and creates dazzling starbursts. The long exposure pulls in all kinds of light and colors and the low ISO keeps things s-m-o-o-t-h. I did shoot this photo in RAW but all I did in Lightroom to this shot is apply my standard import settings and touch up a little sensor dust.

Truthfully, I rarely look at the exposure meeter for these shots. I usually just take a 30 second f/22 shot at ISO 100 and check the LCD. If it’s too dark I’ve probably missed the magic blue hour and it’s either time to pack it up or break out the DIY bulb switch (though I usually try a few in vain at f/16 and f/8 just to be sure). If the shot is too bright I’ll just back off the shutter to 15 seconds and try again. If that doesn’t work I just wait a bit until the light drops off some more. The only real hard part is getting the timing right (most people are packing up to leave about the time I’m setting up for my best shots) and being patient (30 second exposures can seem like an eternity sometimes).

It’s really one of the few never-fail shots if you use these settings. Trick is you pretty much have to use all of these settings to get decent results. Break out the tripod and give it a try tomorrow night!

Here are a few more examples on my Flickr stream if you’re interested.

My father in-law asked me to take a picture of his Christmas table centerpiece arrangement so he could e-mail it to an out of town friend. My attempt at a quick snapshot didn’t meet my with my photographic standards so I spent the next hour playing with lighting to get the final shot above. This was a very challenging shot as I had to make do with what lighting I could find in the house. Here’s how I did it:

First of all, my in-laws’ house is DARK. Dark walls. Dark floors. Dark furniture. Dark lamps. You get the idea. Plus, it was night so the wall of windows to the left of the subject weren’t helping. Of course, I could have waited for morning but I always like a good challenge. Plus, I figured that if I got it right, a night shot would better capture the elegant and rich warmth of the table setting.

My first test shot was attampted with nothing but the incandescent  lamp light filtering in from the living room behind the camera. This required a 6 second exposure at f/8 and ISO 400 (a tripod was used so my K10D’s IS was OFF). I used f/8 to ensure that the entire arrangement was in sharp focus while the background was blurred a bit. I like the f/8 shot because there is enough background detail to clearly place this shot in my in-laws dining room while the subject focus was nicely isolated. The lighting in this first shot was too flat. I wanted more subject isolation so I grabbed a floor lamp and placed it to the left of the camera and tried again:

This set-up provided better subject isolation via lighting but the shadows seemed a bit harsh. I played around with a few combinations of settings and finally settled on 4 seconds at f/8 and ISO 100 but was still not happy with the results.

Recalling some studio shots that I did not long ago where I held a shaded lamp directly above my subjects, I decided to try holding the lamp above the centerpiece just out of the frame. I also turned off all the lights in the living room and opened the glass doors on the china cabinet behind the arrangement to eliminate the reflection of the lamp. Finally, I lit the candles to add another level of detail and ambiance to the shot.

This set-up is what I used for the final shot. (Note use of lens hood to quell flare). I sped up the ISO to 200 to get a 1.6 second exposure at f/8. This was mainly because the lamp was a bit heavy to be holding up like this for 6 seconds but also because a shorter exposure helped cut down on the ambient light bleeding in to the background. While the shutter was open I slowly arced the lamp from left to right to paint the entire arrangement and blur the shadows. The resulting image (top) ended up with shadows that were much softer at the subject with a nice gradual fall off of the light into the background. I couldn’t have done much better with an actual soft box in a studio ;-)

With a nice looking exposure I pulled the image into Lightroom to adjust the white balance (2625K) and apply my standard Sharpness (14), Detail (51), Clarity (30), and Vibrance (+25) settings. I also pushed the Recovery up to 73 to help correct some over exposure of the reds and knock back the highlights on the shiny green leaves a bit. A bit of final cropping (always leave room for cropping!) and off the image went to my father in-law.