Pixel Darkroom Photography

Today I wanted to shoot this little bird feeder in sunset light. But since the sun is always gone behind a building by the time it’s about to light this bird feeder, I thought I’d create my own sunset light. The way it works is like this: You set your camera to shoot on manual mode and underexpose the photograph so you can get a rich saturated sky. You do this by closing down the aperture (higher f-stop number) and/or increasing the shutter speed. I shot this somewhere around 1/160 of a second so it could still synchronize with my off camera flash via a radio trigger, called pocket wizard and at f8, or so. The flash had a gel (a colored plastic film on top, to make it orange looking, closer to the color of the setting sun). You have to play a little with the settings until you get the desired balance of light. There it is, day 144, bird feeder in the late afternoon home made sunset light. Read below for settings and check out the setup shot linked below for actual “view”.

Strobist info: 580 EX II at 1/1 105mm with full CTO via Pocket wizard, CR. Drop down the ambient to bring some color back in the sky. Setup shot.

Enjoying late daylight.

Tweaks in Lr.

I know it looks a bit like another photograph of mine shot earlier some morning, except that this is a night exposure of 25 seconds or so and I cooled down the temperature in post production. The city lights gave it a warm color, similar to the one in this shot. I liked the cool version better. The long exposure also made for the clouds to run away. Here goes day night 97.

Moon in the sky and city lights lighting the clouds. Long exposure at night.

Today I saw an UFO. It’s the first UFO that I have ever seen live. I got the camera out and took this shot. It was unbelievable. I then saw a guy being lifted up by this big ray of light. Then he fell – they must have dropped him, or somethin’. I don’t know what to say. Maybe they picked up the shutter click from my camera and it somehow interfered with their beam. I never really believed in UFOs, but after tonight,… I don’t know, man… it’s just something… I’m really dizzy. Maybe the ray of light got to me too… I hope I’ll still be here tomorrow. If you don’t see a post tomorrow… you know where I am. I’ll keep my camera with me, in case I ever get back, or in case someone finds the camera… or at least the CF card.

Strobist info: UFO light up in the sky. Tweaks in Lr only (WB, tint, etc.) – no layers, no Ps, nothing else.

Post Scriptum: big big big kudos to whomever can tell me how this shot was done, in case you didn’t believe my UFO story.

I saw this beautiful sky this morning and loved it. I realized that many of us see this beauty and go right passed it, either because we drive to work, we commute, we’re running late or something else. And yet there are so many beautiful things out there that are worth at least a few extra seconds of our time and we do not take that time to enjoy it. I’m not trying to get out if it easy today with a sky shot. The thing is, I really liked it and that’s what matters. As I have written before (I think) if I don’t take a shot that I like that day, I cannot take it and post it later . I might not get it some other time.

No strobist info here. Just that big fireball in the sky. By the way, the fireball and the houses dictated the framing; I just tilted my camera to get as much from the sky as I could from my position without getting anything else distracting. Just like you should take the extra few seconds and enjoy the Master’s painting without much else to distract you for a few seconds. Now go share this on Facebook or Twitter or Digg it, or somethin’. Help me out here.

License image here

Nothing here. Thanks for stopping by. Your constructive comments are always appreciated.
Oh, here’s where you can license this image at full resolution for anything you may need, calendar, postcard, poster, fine art, etc.