Tag: night photography

Tower Hill at Night – ep. 1

Explore Tower Hill at Night – a series that showcases stunning winter light displays and innovative plant exhibits.

The New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill has an amazing staff who make this garden one of my favorite places to visit throughout the entire year. Their dedication to curating such a beautiful and diverse array of plants and displays truly shines through in every season, but it’s during the holiday season that they really outdo themselves. They create the most spectacular winter light display that I have experienced, transforming the garden into a breathtaking wonderland adorned with thousands of twinkling lights.

This past year there were additional night events that gave us this experience, one of which was the “Stranger Plants” exhibit. This innovative showcase featured other-worldly imaginings of what plants might look like in alternative realities, pushing the boundaries of creativity and imagination. Each installation was a testament to artistic expression, blending whimsical designs with the fascinating world of botany. Creativity abounded, engaging visitors of all ages and inviting them to marvel at the possibilities of nature’s wonders.

The overall experience at the New England Botanic Garden, especially during the holiday season, allows for reflection and joy, making it a beloved destination that captivates the heart and imagination year after year.

The Lone Mushroom

As you can tell from its size, this mushroom might be thinking of exploring the world to see where it can find its next meal! Its impressive stature hints at a wide array of adventurous possibilities beyond the forest floor, where it could thrive in search of sustenance. Don’t let its beautiful colors fool you, as its vibrant hues are not just for show; they signal a hidden danger. As its spores will approach you with their hive-mind abuzz, a dance of tiny particles weaves through the air, showcasing the unfathomable interconnectedness of nature. This mushroom, both exquisite and enigmatic, serves as a reminder of the delicate balance between beauty and peril in the wild.

A Different Light

Sometimes we get a unique light source, such as in the image featured in this post.

It’s pretty often that I write about light in all its forms, which makes sense, given the derivation of the word photography. Today, I’m featuring a rather different source of light that I captured for the first time during the workshop you’ve heard mentioned over the past week or so.

Let’s take a look at this light source…

Dance of the Lightning Bugs

If you look carefully in the lower righthand corner of the image, you’ll see a string of green lights progressing toward the covered bridge. During this 30 second exposure, a pair of lightning bugs danced into the bridge! A pure moment of serendipity, which made this otherwise mundane image something a little magical!

Follow the light, my friends!

Saturday’s Light

The Night Photography workshop with Loren Fisher provided valuable insights and enjoyable learning experiences. Here’s another image from that week.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, the Night Photography workshop with Loren Fisher was a lot of fun and definitely gave me some additional thoughts for future photography opportunities. Loren is great at adapting to the conditions that nature gives us, and keeping the learning enjoyable and appropriate to the level of all in the workshop.

Here’s another one of the night images…

Quiet Barn

This barn sits on the President Calvin Coolidge Historic site in Plymouth, Vermont. This was at the tail end of our shooting during blue hour with Loren lighting up the barn with a flashlight to bring it out of silhouette mode. I kept this image a bit darker, as it gives a sense of mood and the weathered texture that is presented by the structure.

There will certainly be more opportunities in the future to do some of this exploration myself.

Workshopping

A workshop led by Loren Fisher focused on night sky photography and light painting. It was some great learning and some cool images!

I just returned from a great workshop held by Loren Fisher (go check out his work)! The subject of the workshops was the night sky and light painting. We had a lot of fun and learning about Milky Way photography, capturing the sky and lighting up subjects to create an interesting image.

Here’s one from the workshop…

Patchwork Truck

This patchwork truck stands out in the field and is a great subject to capture at night with the help of some intelligent lighting (by Loren) and a long exposure.

Nubble Light at Night

Nubble Lighthouse in Maine is a highly photographed landmark. During the holidays it is illuminated beautifully.

Nubble Lighthouse on Cape Neddick in Maine is one of the most photographed lighthouse in the area. I have seen so many great photos of this gorgeous location that I felt not qualified to photograph it for years; the reason was simply that I didn’t see anything in the location and structure that I hadn’t see before and I felt that I couldn’t add anything to its portfolio of images that exists everywhere.

This all changed on a June day in 2013, when something clicked in my head and I came up with a vision that I hadn’t seen before (see my post on Editing Mood to see what was different). Since then I have photographed it a number of times, but still only when I see something that is not just another pretty image, such as this…

Nubble Light at Night

The keeper and crew do a wonderful job each holiday season to light up the entire complex on the island upon which Nubble Light sits; it is gorgeous and a sight to behold.

I set up well before sunset for this shoot to find a location that was closer to the water level and framed some of the foreground rocks and water to capture enough of the reflection. Using a longer exposure of 45 seconds smoothed the water and allowed enough of the buildings to show up in the image while keeping the sky just dark enough. It’s not fully dark yet, which makes for a bit of magic in the juxtaposition between sea, rocks and sky vs the lighthouse complex.

A Return to Iceland

The Aurora Borealis in Iceland was magnificent, as captured in this video!

First of all, greetings to everyone! It’s been too long since my last post for all the wrong reasons.

Great news is my recent return to Iceland for the third time. This was the first foray into the land of Fire and Ice during the Winter season, as I wanted to see even more of the Ice part of this beautiful country. During ten days in February, my traveling companion, George Fellner, and I spent some quality time photographing the amazing landscapes in their Winter glory.

Here’s my first item to share from this epic journey (it’s almost 4 minutes long, and I hope you enjoy all of it along with the soundtrack):

Aurora in Vik, Iceland

This was the first time in my life that I experienced the Aurora Borealis in person, and it was absolutely magical, breathtaking and astounding!

We had scoped out a location ahead of time, which would provide a bit of foreground in the form of the hills that you see in these images; the location is about 20 minutes from the town of Vik, and definitely not the most popular place, as we had it to ourselves. A number of other locations had large groups of people gathered, as we could even hear them in the quiet of the night.

After setting up around 9 pm, I spent some time ensuring that all the camera settings were within a range that would work, dialing in the exposure on my remote trigger. Just after 10 pm, the first glimpses of the aurora started showing in the sky, much to our excitement! For the next hour we were treated to this magnificent celestial display.

For the photography nerds, these images were capture on the Canon EOS R5 using the 15-35mm f2.8L RF lens. I kept my aperture wide open at f2.8 and set ISO to 800. During the shoot I made some adjustments to exposure lengths depending on strength of the aurora; exposure was typically around 20 seconds.

Hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

Ex Terra Orbis

Orbs of light travel among us!

There’s nothing better for finding inspiration to create some photographs than going to the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, MA! I’m lucky enough to live less than 10 minutes from this wonderful facility, so visits are fairly frequent!

Ex Terra Orbis

The walk through the Ramble area in the garden presents an intriguing array of spheres of various sizes, which subtly change their colors in a playful manner. I always love capturing them, as their mystery really comes across when contrasted with the dark that surrounds them.

Orbs Aglow

By juxtaposing some of these orbs, there is the opportunity to let our minds explore thoughts of their origins. In the above image, I might imagine that we’re looking at gigantic amphibian eggs that form loosely coupled clusters in the ether around us. Very fanciful imaginings of possible space amphibians that make a regular trip to our planet…

The above images were captured with an iPhone 13 Pro Max and processed with Skylum’s Luminar AI and touched up with Adobe Photoshop.

Kryptomorphaics #9 – Transitions

The soul guides us…

 

IMG_8069
Transitions

Image Description

This image, ‘Transitions‘, is one of the more complex of my Kryptomorphaics compositions in that it incorporates both a modicum of zoom blur and a large amount of rotation.

The recognition of this composition came to me during a nighttime photo-walk with a group of fellow photographers.  While many were taking long exposure shots, I was on the prowl for something a little different: looking for what lies hidden under the surface and how I could bring this out.  When I came upon a pair of white columns with a couple of spotlights on them, I knew that I had found my subject.  Looking upon them, I noticed how they framed the traffic turning behind them, which helped me decide on the shot, as I set up my tripod.

What truly inspired me that night, was an event that occurred across the Atlantic Ocean in the Netherlands: the passing of the aunt, to whom I always felt a close connection.  She had been suffering through the ravages of lung cancer, and I knew that my visit with her about a month earlier was the last time that I would see her.  She and I always had a strong bond, and it was no different on this night.  As I felt a strong pull, I captured this photograph in one take, and knew something significant had happened; a message from her sister the next morning confirmed what I had sensed: her transition to another plane of existence.

On this long exposure, I was certainly guided by her spirit, and when I saw the result on a bigger screen that night, I knew that we had created something special.

Technical Details

This image was captured with a Canon EOS 5D Mk II and 17-40mm f/4L lens at 100 ISO, f/20 at a 30 second shutter speed.  The camera was rotated along its axis very slowly to get the smearing of the columns and create the window.  A slight bit of zoom blur during this rotation created the depth.