In this post I’ll briefly explain how to take photographs like this one.

Just like my previous post on shooting sprinklers, this isn’t exactly the most practical of tutorials. Sorry.

All you need is a small point and shoot camera with an attached wrist-strap. For the examples in this post, I used a Sony DSC-P200:

You’ll need to be able to control the shutter speed of the camera. Most point-and-shoots should have some way for you to do this. Take a look at your instruction manual if you’re not sure how to. For my point-and-shoot, I can control the shutter speed by shooting in manual mode:

Choose how long you want the shutter to stay open for. I set shutter speed at 30 seconds for the examples in this post, which is the maximum the camera allows.

Once you’ve chosen your shutter speed, find a dark place (you’ll probably want to do this at night), press the shutter, hold the camera by the strap, and start swinging your camera around like a madman. Make sure your strap is sturdy so that your camera won’t accidentally fly off of it.

Afterwards, you might have overexposed your image if you kept the shutter open too long with too much light.

A little Photoshopping can help you get the look you want:

Things to experiment with for interesting results:

• Location
• Shutter speed
• Color of the lights around you
• How you swing the camera

Good luck!

This is another post geared towards ideas and experimentation, rather than practicality and general photography.

Here are two (kind of abstract) photographs I took recently. The first one is of some webs that I came across:

Canon 40D + 16-35mm f/2.8 at 35mm. f/10, 1/50s, and ISO 200.

The second photo was of the night sky packed with stars:

Canon 40D + 16-35mm f/2.8 at 26mm. f/2.8, 1/800s, and ISO 200.

Actually, neither of the photos were of what I claimed they were.

Can you guess what I shot to make these two photographs?

They were actually both taken in my backyard. My sprinklers were going off and I was curious about what the scene would look like photographed.

In fact, both photos are nearly identical in location and framing. What was different was shutter speed. Notice how the water drops in the first photograph appear as lines. The relatively slow shutter speed (1/50th of a second) is what did that. The faster shutter speed (1/800ths of a second) in the second one rendered the drops almost as points.

Here are the original, uncropped photos. You can hover your mouse over them to see what they looked like straight out of the camera, prior to post-processing:

For photos like these, the sprinklers should be between you and the sun. If the sun is behind you, then you probably won’t catch the water drops very well on camera. It also helps around if there’s a shadow or dark background behind the sprinklers.

Try experimenting with abstract photographs of ordinary things, using camera settings to give the photos different looks and textures. If you come up with some interesting ideas or find interesting results on your hands, please do share them with us!

Here’s a quick idea for you to try if you’re looking for some photo inspiration (after all, we have a whole section devoted to this kind of thing). I haven’t spent much time hashing out this idea, so it’s pretty undeveloped compared to some of the other walkthroughs I’ve written. Maybe one of these days I’ll go out with my assistant (AKA my brother) and really shoot this concept.

What You’ll Need

In addition to your camera, this will require:

• A nice outdoor location
• A garden hose
• Something that can generate mist (i.e. garden hose spray gun)
• An assistant

What To Do

Be sure it’s a pretty sunny day outside. Rainbows might be hard to catch if there’s too little direct sunlight (kind of the opposite of fish?).

You’ll want to stand somewhere between the sun and the mist. Otherwise, you’ll end up with photos that look like these:

Even though they might be interesting, you won’t end up with any rainbows shooting out of the spray gun.

Have your assistant spray mist in your general direction, and try to move around to see if you can catch a glimpse of any rainbow that may result. If you locate this rainbow, reposition your assistant’s spray and your own location until the rainbow matches up with the spray nozzle in your assistant’s hand.

I haven’t experimented much with the location or background, but try to keep the background dark to have the rainbow stand out more in the photo. Also, try shooting wide open (largest aperture) if possible, to throw the background out of focus and further bring out the rainbow.

That’s about it! If any of you try your hand at this idea and have interesting results, please do share it with us by linking to your photograph in the comments!

One of the things that never ceases to catch my eye is when people are framed in interesting ways within tunnels of light. That sounds a little confusing, so let me show you some examples…

Here’s a photograph I took just a few days ago on a walk along a greenbelt near my home (you can hover over it to see the original, unaltered photograph):

Canon 40D + 16-35mm 2.8 at f/2.8, 1/80s, and ISO 800.

This isn’t the best of examples, but I’ll just start off with it. Notice how the trees create a shadowy, natural vignette around the two people walking arm in arm. You might be surprised, but you can find these “natural vignettes” everywhere you look — you just need to look for them! I do wish the couple was a little closer to me along the path, perhaps at the edge of where the trees’ shadows reach (you’ll see why in just a moment).

The other really interesting thing I like about this photograph is how the gap in the sky created by the trees is the shape of a heart, but I digress…

Let’s move on to another example…

Here’s a photograph I took back in February 2008 at the UC Davis arboretum. My family and I were walking along the path and passed under a tunnel (hover over it to see the original):

Canon 20D + 24-70mm 2.8 at f/7.1, 1/200s, and ISO 800

The light bouncing off the water was creating interesting patterns on the tunnel wall, while my family became silhouettes when framed by the strong daylight at the end of the tunnel.

This is slightly cheating, since a dark tunnel during the day will always be a place to shoot “tunnel of light” photographs. Thus, I find naturally occurring “light tunnels” much more interesting. They depend much more on where you stand and how you frame the shot.

This third and final example was taken back in April of this year outside the VLSB building on the UC Berkeley campus (hover over to see original):

The man was still in the shadow of the overhanging branches, so he too became a silhouette when framed by the bright scene in the background.

Adding some strong artificial vignetting during post-processing also helps to make this kind of photograph more interesting.

Next time you’re outdoors, try framing someone using shadows and a tunnel of light!

On the same day I was experimenting with the light painting I described in a post yesterday, I also fiddled around with long exposure portraiture. I had my buddy Aaron pose for me at his desk in near darkness. The only sources of light in the room were his laptop screen, a few LED flashlights that I placed on his desk in various directions, and a lighter that Aaron held in his hand.

Here’s the original, unedited photograph that resulted:

It was taken with a 10 second exposure at ISO 100. It was probably a mistake to use such a low ISO, since I could have gotten the same exposure with less time if I had used a higher number. Every time the ISO number doubles, the shutter speed is cut in half for the same exposure (assuming aperture is kept constant). This is pretty intuitive, since if you double the sensitivity of your film, you’ll only need half as much time to expose it with the same amount of light.

Keeping the aperture at a constant f/8, here’s what the difference would have been.

ISO 100 – 10 second exposure
ISO 200 – 5 second exposure
ISO 400 – 2.5 second exposure
ISO 800 – ~1.25 second exposure
ISO 1600 – ~.75 second exposure

Luckily, Aaron was able to hold still enough to not appear too blurry in the photograph, making it acceptable when viewed at a normal web resolution. If it were to be blown up or printed, the faster shutter speed would have helped a lot.

Here’s a crop showing the different small sources of light that I used to illuminate the scene:

What I found interesting about lighting up the scene this way was that each of the sources of light were a slightly different color temperature, giving the scene an interesting look in terms of colors and lighting.

During post processing, I increased exposure a little, did a little recovery, added a splash of fill light, and pushed contrast up a little. Here’s the final image (hover over it to compare it to the original):

If you’re looking for something new to learn and photograph, try your hand at taking longer exposure portraits with unconventional sources of light. Just find a friend that can hold still!