First things first, the most important thing to do is to plan well. Forward planning is vital to any night sky shot, along with a steady tripod and a warm coat. There are quite a few websites and twitter feeds that can help you with your planning. Even though it only takes about an hour and a half for the ISS to complete an orbit of the planet, you could be waiting quite some time under the night skies before the station appears above. The station only appears for a short time (about 1-2 weeks) and then re-appears again many weeks later. This is due to the orbit of the station above earth.
You can check out a collection of ISS photographs he has taken here.
When German image sensor scientist Joachim Linkemann gave a talk called “Advanced Camera and Image Sensor Technology” at Automate 2011 back in March 2011, he tried to boil things down to terms people could understand and ended up using beer to illustrate the concepts. If you want to learn about how things like signal-to-noise, dynamic range, and dark noise would work if a glass of beer was the pixel on an image sensor, check out the PDF slideshow.
In 9th grade, photographer Joe Edelman was given the assignment of creating 5 separate photos of an egg without moving it. That task became a defining moment in his journey as a photographer, teaching him the importance of learning to “see” light over learning “how” to light.
Here’s a video in which photographer Ryan Schude walks through how he went about shooting a photograph titled “The Diner”. The image involved 24 lights, 20 subjects, and 12 hours of shooting. Check out his crazy lighting diagram and the finished photo.
Even if you have a good command of using f-stop numbers and properly exposing photographs, you might not understand the math behind why f-stop numbers are what they are. Here’s a simple (albeit math-filled) explanation by Dylan Bennett of what f-stop is, including a simple trick you can use to memorize the f-stop scale.
Here’s a tutorial by skateboarding photographer Michael Burnett in which he discusses various composition tips and techniques. His area of expertise is in shooting skateboarders, but the tips are very applicable for other types of photography as well. Read more…
Vimeo has partnered up with Nikon for a new educational video series titled Do More With Your DSLR. The first video is about “working with available light”, and is geared towards beginners who are just starting to figure out how to use their DSLR camera. You can find a more in-depth discussion of the concepts in the video (e.g. exposure, white balance, ISO) in this article.
Here’s a tutorial by photographer Joe Edelman that teaches how you can build a studio lighting setup with fluorescent lights for under $200. You can find a detailed parts list over in the description of the video on YouTube. Read more…
Here’s what Henri Cartier-Bresson, the father of modern photojournalism, said about his concept of “The Decisive Moment” in an interview with The Washington Post in 1957:
Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.
That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever. [#]
The phrase was taken from a quote by the 17th century Cardinal de Retz, who stated, “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.”
