We spoke with photographer and multimedia artist Tim Matsui last year about the making of his feature documentary, The Long Night. A year later the film has won some of the top awards in photojournalism and the work hasn’t stopped for Matsui. We caught up with him again to discuss what it took to make and distribute this film and what comes next for him. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
[ By WebUrbanist in 7 Wonders Series & Travel. ]
When planning out world travel, one typically dwells on destinations more than times, but some of the best sights can only been seen at a particular point in the day or, in the case of these marvels, at night.
WebUrbanist is pleased to announce a new partnership with Google Field Trip, bringing some of our best and brightest travel articles to their mobile platform, allowing you to find hidden wonders of the world wherever (and whenever) you may be. In this article, we have teamed up to highlight seven amazing places to visit by night, each offering special surprises to the nocturnally inclined.
At dusk, people flock to watch the emergence of 1.5 million bats from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge, designed and built in 1980 in a way that inadvertantly turned out to provide an ideal roost for a particular breed of flying nocturnal predators.
Often under-appreciated or even feared, these night flyers consume between 10,000 and 20,000 pounds of food each evening, helping them earn their keep. Today, there is even a dedicated Statesman Bat Observation Center from which visitors are encouraged to experience the spectacle.
By far the biggest such event in the world, the Harbin International Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival consists of huge works of art and architecture that truly come into their own once the sun sets and glowing lights behind and within bricks of ice come to life.
Using swing saws to cut ice directly from an adjacent river, artists then turn the frozen building blocks into human, animal and mythical figures as well as huge staircases and structures. Among other honors and awards, a snow sculpture featured at the festival holds the world’s record for size at 750 feet by 28 feet (13,000 cubic meters of snow). Other similarly-impressive global ice festivals can be found in Japan, Canada and Norway as well.
Fireflies can be a wonderful sight regardless of the species, but one rare type in particular (Photinus Carolinus), is even more special than its cousins: the so-called Synchronous Firefly swarms light up in unison, pulsing every few seconds at the exact same time.
At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, viewers can buy tickets in advance and be taken by shuttle to special viewing areas from which to observe these lightning bugs. Within the park, 18 other species of firefly can also be found, but only one whose constituents almost all flash simultaneously.
A maritime marvel in more ways than one, this 3D optical illusion involves two intersecting planar projections beamed onto perpendicular planes of vertical water.
Created for the Amsterdam Light Festival by VisualSkin, the resulting real-life rendering looks like a 17th-century seafaring vessel seemingly held in stasis and composed of water and light. The effect, naturally, works best at night, turning a fountain by day into a marvelously surprising evening display.
Unbelievable as it may sound, there are those who track urban wonders of all kinds – from the narrowest to the most windy streets of the world and more.
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Humans burrow into the Earth out of anything from necessity to superstition, driven by coincidence or coerced by circumstance.
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From small towns to entire cities, here are some of the most amazing, strange and surreal urban abandonments of the post-modern world.
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[ By WebUrbanist in 7 Wonders Series & Travel. ]
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[ By Steph in Boutique & Art Hotels & Travel. ]
‘Please do not apply if you’re scared of heights,’ warns AirBnB about this private sky-high chalet located at the very top of the Holmenkollen ski jump, where some of the world’s top skiers have launched themselves onto the slopes. The fully-furnished apartment is 250 steps above the world’s first ski museum, and features the highest roof terrace in all of Oslo. Tell AirBnB why you’d like to stay here in 100 worlds or less, and you could win the chance to experience it yourself.
The vacation rental service is offering up a one-night stay at the Holmenkollen ski jump and as long as you’re available on March 26th or 27th, if you win, they’ll fly you in from anywhere in the world. You have until midnight on March 16th to submit your entry.
The ski jump superstructure was first built in 1892 and hosted the 1952 Winter Olympics, where expert skiers gazed out onto the Nordic landscape before flying off the ramp in front of thousands of spectators. Since 1923, it’s also been home to a museum displaying over 4,000 years of ski history. The pinnacle, where the apartment is located, is 200 feet in the air.
Only pros are allowed to use the ski jump, “so don’t think you’re going to be pulling any tricks in your toboggan,” says AirBnB. But you’ll be steps away from thousands of miles of ski slopes, and if you want, you can even leave via zip-line when your trip is over. Apply here.
Parkour is an extremely challenging urban sport that involves big jumps, impressive acrobatics, and a lot of guts. This group captured all that in a crazy jump.
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Breaking into One World Trade Center and scaling to its top was just the beginning for this daring trio, who then not only parachuted from close to the peak …
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Over six years, one dedicated man has constructed his dream house, complete with (presumably fake) boulders, trees, gardens, pools and ponds. It is the kind of …
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[ By Steph in Boutique & Art Hotels & Travel. ]
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Just ’cause the sun disappears after a certain time of day doesn’t mean your camera has to!
If you prefer using natural light in your photos, then shooting after dark (both indoors and out) can feel a little intimidating.
That’s why we’re here with four solutions for tricky nighttime lighting! You’ll make friends with flash, tripods, and everything else you need so your photo-taking can continue late into the night.
Say goodbye to camera curfews. Night owls, rejoice!
4 Tips For Taking Photos After Dark
(…)
Read the rest of Keep Your Night Light Looking Natural (536 words)
© Taylor for Photojojo, 2015. |
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Vancouver street photographer JC Wilson spends time on Summer evenings photographing the ebb & flow of customers and workers in an Asian night market.
JC keeps his gear light and simple and goes with the flow. His post production technique gives an unusually compelling look to his black & white photographs.
…
The Luminous Landscape – What’s New
There are so many great aspects and genres of photography it was hard to narrow it down for the best of the best series this week. Those that didn’t quite make the cut for a whole list of their own can be found here. They include: macro, street and night photography.
If you enjoy these types of photography here are a few of the top articles over the last year in these categories:
I was basically running behind these guys with a wide lens. Good timing is everything in street photography.
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The post Best Specialty Articles of 2014 on dPS: Macro, Street, and Night Photography by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.
I will show you an experience I had of shooting in the middle of the night after sunset without a tripod. Many monuments don’t allow you to shoot with a tripod but you still want to take a photo. The nicer light in my opinion is usually after sunset or before sunrise, so I will show you how to take and process a photo without a tripod at night.
If you have a nice high vantage point to take a beautiful photo but cannot put down your tripod you will see that there
is something we can do about it. The trick is you must put your camera on a timer, (use the built-in 2-second timer) meaning when you press the shutter it counts to two and then takes a photo. This way when you take the photo you are not pressing the button so there is less vibration.
Next go into manual mode and put it on 1/20th of a second. Usually it will be blurry, but if you put your arms on your stomach and stop breathing you should get a sharp photo. Then open the lens as much as you can. As you can see the photo is very sharp and I was only at 320 ISO.
As usual I am always shooting to get the highlights, so what you do is you put your camera at 1/20th of a second, 2 second on timer, approximately f/2.8 aperture (or open as wide as you can), then start going up on the ISO. You take several photos until you see that you have something you like.
Now let’s see how we are going to retouch this photo. First we are going to open up the shadows; you see how we can see the entire city?
Now on the white balance. When you are taking a photo of a sunset in a city there is one white balance that I advise you to use, but it is very difficult to get the right white balance right away. What I usually do is go to the shade preset, and add a bit of magenta, that is something I like.
Then bring down the highlights, and lastly do the white and black points.
Look how incredible this photo is, I took it without a tripod at night, now the only problem is that I don’t have a long exposure so the cars are very sharp, I don’t have the lighting streak behind the cars that I would have liked but it’s still pretty good.
Ok, now let’s crop the photo a bit to get it to look more dynamic.
Next, let’s take a brush, select a warm temperature and add some clarity to it and we will now start painting the photo in specific areas where we want to add color.
We will now create a graduate filter to accentuate the sunset.
Create a new graduate filter to add some highlights to parts of the buildings to make them come out a little bit more.
We will now add a gradient filter on the top of the photo to create more of a blue sky.
We will remove some clarity on the overall photo. Last but not least let’s add some sharpness, there is almost no noise as I am using this amazing Sony camera, so we will only remove a bit of noise.
We can now see the end result of this photo that was taken at night without a tripod. I find it quite incredible!
For a full walk-through of how this is done check out this video:
If you enjoyed this tutorial you can find more of Serge’s tips and courses here.
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The post Tips for Retouching a Night Photograph using Lightroom by Serge Ramelli appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Autofocus is so good on modern cameras that most photographers use it all the time. It seemingly never lets you down. But, let’s say it’s nighttime and you are going to do some shooting. You find a good spot. You set up your tripod. You go to focus your camera using the autofocus. You can feel the camera’s focus ring twisting back and forth, trying to focus. But it never gets there. The camera keeps hunting for a focus spot but never finds one.
Uh-oh. What are you going to do now?
Actually, this problem doesn’t arise only at night. Your camera will typically have trouble focusing in any really dark scene. So here are some tips for dealing with that situation and focusing your camera when it is dark:
Sometimes you can still use your autofocus. Even though it is dark, most night scenes will have a bright spot or two. They might be streetlights, or a lit-up building, or even the moon. That bright spot can be used to set your autofocus.
To do so, find a bright spot that is reasonably close to your desired plane of focus (i.e., the same distance away as your focal point). Autofocusing on that point should take care of your problem. Just focus on that bright spot in a normal fashion and your camera is now focused on something the same distance away as your subject. You should then be able to take your picture with proper focus.
Most cameras focus using something called contrast detection. That means the camera will have the best chance at finding something to focus on if you aim at the area of high contrast between something bright and the dark background. So don’t aim your focus point at the middle of the bright spot in your frame. Rather, focus on the edge of the bright point. The camera will use the contrast between the very light and the very dark tones to focus.
If you are attempting to autofocus on a relatively close subject, you can use a flashlight to assist with the focus. This is one of the many reasons to keep a flashlight in your camera bag.
To do that, shine your flashlight on your subject. That will lighten it up enough for the camera to focus on it. Set your focus, then you can turn off the flashlight and take your shot.
Assume you now have your focus set using the methods set forth above. But to get that focus, you had to move your camera away from your desired composition to focus on the edge of a bright spot. Move your camera back to your desired composition to get the shot. Don’t refocus as you do so though – just move the camera and take the shot with the focus you’ve already set. (You will need to either hold the shutter button part way down, use focus lock, or focus and then turn off the AF so it doesn’t attempt to refocus once you have recomposed – or see #5 below.)
It is times like this, when you want to take a shot with out refocusing, that back-button focus really pays dividends. If your camera allows it, go into the menu and set up your focus so that it is not triggered when you press the shutter button halfway down, but rather is triggered when you press a button on the back of your camera. That way since your focus is not set with the shutter button, when you take the picture by pressing it there is no chance that your camera refocuses.
If there is nothing for you to use to set your autofocus, you might have to use the dreaded manual focus. But don’t worry, it is not difficult. In the dark, it is often easier to focus manually than hunt for something to use for autofocus.
Higher-end lenses make it easier to manually focus. In a high-end lens there should be a scale on the front that tells you the distance (in both feet and meters) at which you are focused. Use that to set the focus.
You might need a flashlight to see the scale. This is yet another reason to keep a flashlight in your camera bag.
If you cannot find a point to focus on, and your lens does not have a distance scale, all is not lost. You can guestimate and get it right in a lot of cases.
To do so, make sure you are shooting with a high aperture value (small opening, large f-number). That will create a wide depth of field to give you some wiggle room in your focus. Specifically, the wide aperture will make a wider range of things acceptably sharp in your frame.
In addition, be sure you are shooting with a wide angle lens. This is not the time to try anything telephoto. The wider angle of view creates a more forgiving environment for your focus.
With a wide aperture and the wide angle of view, you have a broader latitude in your focusing. Now manually focus your camera. If you are shooting a broad scene that extends to infinity, set the manual focus just shy of infinity. The latitude you built-in will make things acceptably sharp all the way to infinity and a certain distance in front of your focus point as well. That will give you the best chance of having the whole scene in focus.
If you can see anything on your camera’s LCD using Live View, then you can use that to manually focus. This is frequently better because you can zoom in on your subject and clearly see if you have nailed the focus. Try using this whenever possible, as it allows a degree of control over focus that is not otherwise possible.
One of the beautiful things about digital photography is that shooting is free. Unless your scene is moving in front of you, you get a free do-over. Use it liberally. Take a shot, look at it on the LCD, and if the focus isn’t right, just do it again. If your camera allows it, go ahead and zoom in on the preview to clearly see the detail and whether or not you have nailed the focus.
These tips will help you set your focus at night or when you are in a very dark scene. In fact, some of these tips will also help in broad daylight when the camera thinks it is dark because you are using a 10-stop neutral density filter. Try them when your autofocus is hunting but not finding the focus. You should be able to nail the focus in almost any situation.
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The post 9 Tips to Help you get Sharp Focus at Night by Jim Hamel appeared first on Digital Photography School.
A multimedia journalist by trade, Tim Matsui’s still photography projects have taken him from native Alaskan villages to Brazilian Air Force training facilities. Matsui shares with us his journey in creating his latest documentary work, from its beginnings in still photography to the adaptations he made to turn it into a video production. Learn more about his work on ‘The Long Night,’ a documentary debuting this week that looks into human trafficking in Seattle. Read our Q&A
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]
Opening last night in Nuenen, Holland, this illuminated cycling surface is free to the public, storing sunlight during the day to create stellar patterns to guide riders after dark. First of its kind on the planet, the swirling shapes of this path are recognizably inspired by one of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings.
Developed by Dutch artist and innovator Daan Roosegaarde in conjunction with infrastructure specialists from Heijmans, this pathway is a potential prototype for future cycling paths using smart paint technologies as well as an extension of an ongoing series of glow-in-the-dark highway projects and other urban improvement proposals in the works around the world.
Part practical lighting scheme and part installation art project, the path is located along a stretch of a bicycling route passing through Noord Brabant, the region from which van Gogh originated, which in turn connects various notable sites from his personal life and work. Its creator explains: “I wanted to create a place that people will experience in a special way, the technical combined with experience – that’s what techno-poetry means to me.”
The semi-abstract pixelated swirls are a high-tech reference to Starry Night, painted in 1889 and depicting an idealized view from the east-facing window of the painter’s asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City).
Studio Roosegaarde is known for “tactile high-tech environments in which viewer and space become one. This connection, established between ideology and technology, results in what Roosegaarde calls ‘techno-poetry’. His often interactive work connects people with art and people with people.”
Proposed just two years ago, this alternative solar-powered passive streetlight system is now already a reality, deployed along motorways across the …
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Glow in the dark tech doesn’t have to be limited to novelties like glow sticks – it could be used to make the roads safer, provide illumination …
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There is simply no way to see the starry skies above the typical urban metropolis – but one photographer has found a way to simulate the stunning potential …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]
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