Photographing Laser Light

My attempt at a technique taught by Dean Collins for photographing beams of light.

Light itself is invisible. Think of your car headlights. You don't see the light coming out of the headlights, but rather the areas where it hits.

To photograph it, you make the light beam visible by making it "hit" something in all the areas you want it to show up in your photograph. Pretty simple concept and pretty simple to do.

Photographing Fireworks

Every year around the 4th of July and New Year's Day, there are several people asking for advice on how to photograph the upcoming fireworks. It seems that the questions are almost always the same, just new people asking them.

I'll share my technique and offer some tips. If you're a seasoned photographer, then most, if not all, will be redundant. Other people should hopefully find this useful.

In some ways, this article is late by a couple of days; being written on July 5th. Or you can see the glass as half-full, and realize that you now have many months to get ready :-)

Quick Guide

Preparation

• Set your camera to ISO: 100, Aperture: f/11, Shutter Speed: Bulb
• Turn off Long Exposure NR (on my camera, it doubles the time for an exposure - essentially forcing a break between photographs)
  
• Put the camera on a tripod, with remote release cable attached
  
• Set the zoom on your lens to cover the desired area
• Set your lens to manual focus, and focus on infinity
  

The Photographs
The Fireworks
As the fireworks go off, anticipate the bursts and shoot away. Take as many photographs as you can. You may end up throwing away a bunch of them.

You can usually see the rocket go up before it explodes. Press the shutter as it's going up and keep it pressed till the sparks fall off.

The longer you keep the shutter pressed, the more fireworks you'll capture in that photograph.

Beyond that it's practice. Anticipating the bursts, capturing cool shapes, keeping the photos from being too busy, etc. comes from experience. The more you shoot, the better you'll get.

Gay Pride 2009

I went and saw the parade and the party for the first time. Took several photographs (93 came out decent), and have posted them to Flickr.

Some of the photographs are "adult", so you have to log into Flickr to see those.

Photography Information:
Using my light meter, I metered 3 settings and saved these in my camera's custom dial settings:

• Sun at my back
• Sun to my front
• In the shade
  

I did this before I took the first shot. Since it wasn't cloudy (moving clouds, hiding the sun), I was all set up. I also set up the right white balance using my expodisc.

From that point on, it was pretty easy. Click of the dial, and I had all the settings preset. Just point, compose and shoot.

Here's a few teasers.

Photographing a beam of light

Strait Line Laser Level 30
Originally uploaded by Akif IkraEditm

Edit: I've rewritten this here. Keeping this post in place now - maybe delete it later.

Walk Across the Golden Gate

It had been quite a while since I had crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on foot. Many, many years if I remember correctly.

Decided to do it today. As luck would have it, I managed to get there a little before sunset, and caught the sunset from the bridge.

Yesterday, I had gone to Santa Cruz, and hung out at the boardwalk and took a few photographs.

New Years 2009 Fireworks

Taken from Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. Showed up there with plenty of time before the fireworks began. Hung out and enjoyed the beautiful view, chatted with a few people, etc. till the show started.

Initially, I hadn't planned on taking any photographs, but once I was there any doubts were gone.

Had my camera gear with me, but didn't have a tripod. So I put the camera on the roof of the car. Had to put the lens cap and trigger release cable under the lens to get the right angle. Got a lot of light trails and cars in the photographs, but cropping them did the trick :-)

Lessons learnt: Take a tripod when you're taking your camera. You never know when you'll need it.









An un-cropped view

Golden Gate Park (part II)

Some more photographs from Golden Gate Park (taken in February - I've been lazy putting them up). Pretty much the same processing as the Pink Magnolia one.