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Night photography challenges both technique and creativity. This week, exploring this type of photography was an experience that really interested me. I understood how light can transform a common scene into a very interesting scene. What I enjoyed most was the process itself, from planning the shot to experimenting with different camera settings and compositions. Each attempt taught me something new, from how to handle noise in images to how to interpret available light. As we head into the final week, I'm interested in continuing to refine my technique, exploring more creative possibilities, and overcoming the challenges that come with working in low-light conditions. I am convinced that each photograph tells a unique story, and my goal is to capture those stories in the most authentic and artistic way possible. The images that I propose in this portfolio of 4 images are images that I took throughout the week, based on the learning content attached for review. The camera I used was the one on my phone, as I used it throughout this course. I thank my classmates and teacher for supporting me with their comments and contributions during this quarter and I look forward to seeing the final work of the class
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I found this assignment kind of stressful because this week was very busy for me. I went to LA for a huge church event and participated in a gospel choir, which was really fun. The only problem is that it occupied a lot of my time, and I struggled to juggle my assignments and all the choir practices and sound checks we had. I was honestly super overwhelmed. Thankfully, I still managed to get a few photos. I took the first one on the plane ride to LA. I find the city lights so pretty from above. There is a slight phone glare reflected in the window from the person sitting next to me but I did my best to minimize it. The second photo was taken on Thanksgiving Day, outside my friend's AirBnB. I attempted to capture the sky and the long exposure of the cars passing by. For the third one, I borrowed my sister's phone to capture the stunning view of the city from Griffith Observatory. I felt like I could not capture this amazing place with my old iPhone XR. Lastly, the fourth photo was taken today as my sister and I walked to dinner. She's currently living in LA because she goes to school here. It was nice to explore her neighborhood. I thought the lights and neon purple light coming off the wall would make for a good photo.
Reflection: I enjoyed learning about night photography and the ideal exposure and shutter speed for each scenario. For my first photo, I wanted an artificial light photo of a stationary vehicle, so when I saw this motorcycle, I decreased my exposure because I had light shining from a street lamp, and it made the motorcycle easily visible. I really wanted to capture a blue hour photo of the beach for this project, so for my second photo, when I saw this post-sunset at Ocean Beach, I knew I had to take a photo of it for the assignment. I could have used more exposure for blue hour to see the beach and surroundings better, but when I took this I hadn't reviewed the lesson. My third photo I wanted to capture long exposure of a car moving to blur the movement, so I set my shutter speed to 3 seconds, and was able to achieve this. My last photo was the photo with the most exposure at f/2, and a shutter speed of 3 seconds, it almost looks like its day time in this photo, but it was actually 9 PM. I found it interesting how much an I-Phone could light up a photo at night, and I wanted to test it out with this one. My greatest challenge for this project was capturing movement of a car driving on the street. There wasn't much traffic on the road, so I had to wait, and I had to mess around with the settings a lot to get the photo to show movement, so it took a lot of trial and error before I got a photo that showed blurred movement. My greatest success for this project was my blue hour photo. It was after a great surf session at Ocean Beach earlier this week, and I thought I'd catch a quick photo of the blue hour sky before I left, I wish I added more exposure though. I learned a lot from this project about night photography and capturing the best photographs for a certain situation, and I hope to improve a lot in my night photography. My favorite kind of night photo are those that show blurred movement, as I love the way the lights spreads across the frame and I hope to take more of these in the future.
I enjoyed this assignment very much, there have been some places I had been warning to take pictures of for this class. I wish I could have gotten some better pictures that fit my vision but it was difficult being out at night with my daughter. Something I found challenging was taking a photo with long exposure. I have an older model phone that's much harder to figure out. Something else I always tend to struggle with is the quality of the image since my phone is older. Something I believe I was successful at would have to be the detail in my first image. I love how clear the dry leaves on the tree showed up. I also really love the way the burnt orange lighting reflects off both the tree and its leaves. It was fun to see a different perspective to everyday things, like things I see around my apartments daily. Overall, I really enjoyed this assignment. For future assignments I plan to play around with the pictures a little more. Get different angles or different types of lighting rather than trying to stick with one theme.Despite loving the theme I stuck with for this assignment, I think it would be fun to step outside my comfort zone and photograph something like moving cars. I really love the look of long exposure car photography.
I thought that this was a fairly challenging assignment. Although, I feel like I am getting a better handle of learning my way around my camera on my iPhone, I still found this to be challenging, as I have always had trouble taking photos at night in every day life. I think that the settings that you use on your camera are absolutely paramount when taking photos at night. I also wish that I took more photos during Blue Hour, as that is my favorite time of the day and the most beautiful, in my opinion.
This assignment was rather fun and challenging. I was sometimes frustrated because I felt I was taking many photos and using suitable techniques, but things didn't work out well. For example, placing my camera on a steady area and using a timer to get the photo - a tripod was helpful! I also had to learn the ins and outs of my iPhone, which I only really paid attention to after. Fortunately, my family was eager to help me with this assignment and my ideas right before bedtime and stand out in the cold for a bit. I enjoyed the outcome of the night photos, given the more complex experience. My kids had a lot of fun creating fun images. The semi-abstract - could be a dupe photo of my daughter in her bedroom with light-up glasses on. We tried to make the light painting technique, but it didn’t come out as clean, but it still looked presentable, in my opinion. Overall, this was a fun assignment, and I enjoyed learning, experiencing a new love for night photography, and getting optimal bonding time with my family. Also, I was fortunate to have had many opportunities to take photos of my kids during this holiday season and practice new skills I’ve obtained during this class.
I had a great time working on this night photography assignment. My best friend and I have always enjoyed exploring the city after hours and capturing its essence through nighttime photos. I have always felt that there's something magical about the city at night, it feels like a completely different world. This project was both fun and nostalgic, reminding me of all the nights we've spent wandering the beautiful spots the city has to offer.
The greatest challenge I faced during this assignment was with the long exposure and astrophotography shots. I had to take several retakes since capturing the stars without them appearing blurry was super tricky at times. However, my greatest success was being in the right place at the right time for my blue hour shot. I also had a few lucky moments during the assignment, like when the car passed by perfectly during my long exposure shot, creating a beautiful light trail to add to the photograph. Overall I think being in the right location at the right moment definitely played a key role in capturing some of these shots. I also had a lot of fun editing these pictures, I added cooler tones and a touch of grain to enhance the atmosphere and give the photos a more textured, vintage feel.
night photography chris valencia
When I took these photos, I was really drawn to capturing different vibes and feelings. Each picture shows a special moment or place, from a quiet evening to a lively concert. The first photo, "Workbench at Dusk," captures the calm of the day winding down. I loved how the soft light highlighted the tools, showing a day’s work ending. The challenge was adjusting the light to avoid losing details in the shadows, but it turned out pretty peaceful. The "Starry Night Over Trees" let me try astrophotography. Getting the stars clear without blur from the long exposure was tricky, but it felt great to capture the night sky's beauty. For the "Concert Scene from Above," I aimed to capture the energy of live music. It was tough to get the lights and movement right without losing details, but the final shot felt alive and full of action. The last image, "Campfire Gathering," was about the warmth of friends around a fire. Making sure the fire lit the scene well without overpowering it was a challenge, but the photo came out warm and inviting. Overall, taking these photos was a mix of fun and learning, with each teaching me something new. I’m proud of how they all turned out.
https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/UODnE0Cr7A5Sp My first photo in this assignment is the one that I decided to use for movement. I took this photo at Corona Del Mar State Beach when me and my friends were having a bonfire. I really edited this photo so I lower the exposure and up the saturation to make the photo stand out and pop more. I took so many pictures of this fire that my phone actually ended up overheating and shutting off, which made me a little nervous. my next photo is a couple streets down from my house where I use artificial light but due to how long I had the exposure on my phone you could really see how cloudy and that the sky was actually pretty bright. I took out about 11:30 at night when me and my roommates went for a nightly stroll because it was really nice outside. I took this photo when I was home for Thanksgiving break. You can definitely see a lot more stars in Northern California, which is something that I love just due to where I currently live. There’s a lot of light pollution up to exposure to capture all these stars and actually see that there is some kind of green lighting behind the trees, which I don’t know why but it’s just what the phone caught with the exposure and lastly my last photo is on Balboa Island, which is just about a 15 minute drive from my house, everyone’s in full swing for Christmas already. I really liked this photo because of the reflection that you can see on all the cars of the hanging lights and I just felt like the contrast for this photo was pretty good for an iPhone. My favorite part about this project was really just kind of getting outside more at night which is something I don’t normally do and my least favorite part that I feel like I struggled with was making sure that my photos were not blurry just due to not having a tripod or anything
Night Photography - Avery Green
This was an interesting week. Most previous weeks, I felt like I understood the lessons and would have an easy time going out there and taking photos that demonstrated new skills, and I was usually wrong to be confident. This week, maybe because I took so many long exposure photos, it felt like there was less of an instantaneous, concrete feeling of either success or failure. There was a lot more trial and error, a lot more experimentation, a lot more learning along the journey. In fact, this week I took as many photos as I previously had in the rest of the weeks combined (granted, some of those will be for next week's assignment).
The cover photo, and second photo in the body here, is one of my favorites of the class so far. I find it eerie. It's both light and dark (very long exposure with high ISO in very dark conditions), the subject is half dead half alive (annual flowers that had bloomed and died a few seasons ago, amongst other healthy foliage), the perspective is a little odd in that the viewer is placed slightly below foreground foliage but can still see under the trees. That photo was a success, albeit an unexpected one. I took about 5 of those and expected them to all be bad. I just wanted to try out a picture from a distant and dim light source, and I got lucky.
One thing that was hard was taking pictures of stars! As it turns out, they are effectively not stationary, nor are they easy to focus on. Focus wound up actually being the main challenge there, and I never figured out an easier method for most of my star pictures than taking a whole bunch of photos through focus and hoping to get one good one.
Another lesson walking away here is the importance of remote or delayed shutter captures. Every time I took a time delay picture with my camera (usually just 2 seconds for me to remove my hand and allow the tripod to stabilize), it would default back to an instant capture! Very annoying, still need to figure that out. I also learned that to use bulb mode, you need to be able to hold a shutter button for a long time (30+ seconds), which for me, would produce a totally streaky blurry bad picture without a cable, so I may get one of those.
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With the Holiday season starting, I found this assignment to be very fun and experimentation. All of the Christmas lights made for many opportunities to get some pretty pictures. I enjoyed how creative I got to be when trying to get pictures in the dark and playing around with the lighting. The hardest part of night photography for me is the lighting. I had a hard time deciding when and if I needed to use flash on some of the pictures. I found that it was easier for me to come up with ideas for pictures on the spot, which is harder for me in the daytime for some reason. I also really enjoyed taking pictures of the city lights. I'd love to experiment more with view spots at night and in the day. When reading about night photography, I was very drawn to it because I like how night photography can be easy on the eyes and give a picture a deeper meaning. Now that I have tried out night photography for myself, I enjoy it even more. I want to continue improving my night photography skills and ability to play around with lighting. I’m excited to catch my pictures at night moving forward, especially Christmas lights.
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The first photo I took is from this week when my family and I visited San Diego. I took this picture because I liked how the light from the stadium really lit up the dark night sky. I also think it is cool how. the sign and trees in the front are all dark but the stadium behind it is all lit up. I think it is interesting how it does this when photos have lighting in the back like this one does. The second photo was also taken in San Diego. I thought it was cool how the night was lit up by lights on the pier as well as the buildings on the left. The third photo was taken at a night golf course near my house. I like how the lighting completely lights up the ground however the sky above is still completely dark. Finally, the last photo was taken from a hill behind my house. I chose it because you can see the effect of the street light on the tree on the left and you can see the impact of lights in the dark areas. My biggest challenge was taking these photos with high quality. When I would take these photos in the dark the quality on my camera usually would not be very good. Sometimes lights would completely blur and alter the image which was not good. My biggest success was when the quality was good, it was cool to see the impact certain lighting had on the photos.
The first two pictures were taken at an arcade. In that Image I took a clear image of some cool neon light artwork. And I also took a picture where I adjusted the lens size mid shot to get an elongated result. I really liked how this one came out.
In my next set of pictures I took it at the museum of modern art sf. There was a particularly interesting sculpture by Yayoi Kusama about a pumpkin. In this picture I set the shutter speed to 4" and adjusted the lens mid shot to get a really cool light painting shot.
I took my third image an arcade of a Ms. Pacman game. I set the exposure to a 1"3 to capture the motion and path of Ms. Pacman and the ghosts. I also used a really high ISO to obtain a grainy look on my image.
My last Image was taken at the SF MOMA as well and it was to pay homage to group f64. I found there work to be extremely interesting. I wanted to take a picture of f64 at f64, but I had to settle with f32 since that's how high my camera goes up to without a better lens. With this shot I just wanted to use gradual camera sway to create a 3Dish effect.
Overall, learning about night photography and light painting was fun. I learned how I can manipulate light by simply adjusting exposure values and by even physically adjusting my camera. I also got to get more practice with the exposure triangle, and am really starting to get the hang of Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO.
The night photography assignments were fun and had me thinking creatively more than other units. It was fun to experiment with different techniques discussed in the modules. I had never taken photos with long exposures before, and it was fun to try different settings to see the outcomes. All of my photos ended up with a long exposure to some degree. My longest exposure photo is the photo of the trees and the stars, coming in at 30 seconds. That exposure was the max for my camera before it switched to "bulb". My shortest exposure was 2 seconds -- the photo of our dog Nana in front of our house. I was able to decrease the exposure time from nights inside the house and porch/garage lights outside the house. I had two biggest challenges. The first was getting photos to be in focus. I had a tripod, which made things a lot easier, but it was also hard to find the correct focusing in very low light conditions. There was a lot of trial and error. The second challenge was a surprise when it came to editing my photos. With these long exposures, my photos were all covered in identical bright red and blue spots. Some googling led to learning that these are "hot pixels". I'm not sure why they are showing up only on these long exposure photos, but, with some additional googling, I figured out how to remove most of them in RawTherapee. My biggest success was trying out new techniques. I had a lot of fun trying light painting. I think there is still a lot of room to improve with my final product, but I would not have thought to try this without learning more about it in the modules this past week.
Night PhotographyFor this assignment I went to take photos at Santa Row in San Jose, CA. I decided on this location since the area would be well lit with Christmas decorations even in the night time. I was able to use the artificial light to decrease the camera exposure. Since pictures were taken with a phone camera and I did not have a tripod I used my breathing as a method to make sure my hands were as steady as they can be. The best part about the location I picked was the abundance of artificial lighting. The downside about this assignment was the time of year; I wanted to take some photos during the blue hour it got too dark early so I missed my window of opportunity. There was also a ton of foot traffic in my location of choice so I had to wait at times to be able to get the picture. Another technique I thought was cool and wanted to implement was painting with light. I tried to look for something that was lit up with artificial light and moving but was unable to find anything. The pictures I did take do have a holiday season feel to them, which I liked very much.
Night Photography - Philip Torres
When taking these pictures it really challenges you on what you can take pictures since the main principle of photography is the lighting on a picture. I was able to get these 4 pictures with what I had at my disposal and how I play around with the available subjects that were available to me and why I took them in the first place.
Starting with the first image at Foothill, I stayed on campus late one day in order to get some help on an upcoming essay. I decided to take the picture because it was a nod to all the hardworking students that have stayed up late at night making sure they are on track to achieve their dreams. I also looked at it as the light guiding you to a better future and it all started there in that picture.
The second image I took it as a sign to nature showing us it's natural made beauty, it's almost like it's showing us this little abundance of leaves especially with the little light giving it that perfect backlight and everything. I thought it looked really nice in the artificial light and the shadows that it was casting.
The third image I took in the means to capture stars but instead I got these rippled clouds almost looking like waves in the sky. I took this in inspiration to keep your head up even in the darkest of times although it may down now you never know what's to come in the future.
Lastly I took a normal nature photo with a bunch of leaves, I myself as a nature photography lover I decided to include 2 photos with artificial lighting and showcase it's colors even in the darkest of days. It's all about perspective and going out to look for it.
My greatest success was the campus photo since the reason that I took it was really in depth with the photo as a whole and on top of that it was a cloudy day so it added a bit more of an effect on the top part of the image. My greatest challenge was looking for subject to take photos of because it was dark for the most areas and it was a super cloudy night making it harder for me to capture stars or any other things in the sky.
This week’s assignment was my favorite assignment to work on so far. Getting to go outside and try to find the best places to shoot was just a lot of fun to do. I found a lot of cool spots in the town I live that I had never explored before. It became part exploration and part assignment. The best part of taking pictures at night is how serene everything feels, there are way less people around so you can just focus and do your thing. I’d say the only downside I experienced was the 30 degree weather, my girlfriend was not interested in leaving the car. Throughout the process I got to experiment with a ton of different angles and shutter speeds. I ended up taking a plethora of super blurry photos because the tripod I was using broke and wouldn’t stay steady whatsoever. I was most interested in the potential of Astrophotography. Since I was very little I’ve always loved staring at the stars, I feel like I could stare for hours just admiring the ever evolving sky. It is also something that bonded my girlfriend and I when we were first getting to know each other so it is something we try to do regularly. That is why after reading this assignment, I was sure that I wanted to focus most of the photos on Astrophotography and I’m pretty happy with how everything turned out.
Night Photography
After the rain finally stopped me and my girlfriend went on a night time photo walk in San Francisco. First 4 photographs are my Nikon EM with 50mm f1.4 and a roll of Ilford HP5 PLUS ISO 400. All these film photos are considered slow shutter speed because the TTL exposure meter(center-weighted) beeps when 1/30th or below. At night the viewfinder is very dark to see the shutter speed needle in the left of the frame so I was very cautious when taking the picture to avoid camera shake(I didn't bring a tripod). I used my surroundings to brace my self or held my breath when taking a shot. The film was developed with CineStill Df96 Monobath and scanned with Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3600u Film Scanner.
I'm currently on my honeymoon with my wife. We went to New Zealand and stayed at SkyScape, located within the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve. So, on a clear night, you will see amazing star studded skys. The first photograph I took at night was our glass cabin. It required a longer exposures (slow shutter speed), so I used a tripod to keep it steady. In addition, I used a camera remote to take the photo. This help keep the camera steady and reduce vibration. The hardest part of this photo was to dial the setting correctly to get the shot. It took many shots to figure out how long the exposure needed to be. For the second photo I did the same set up but used artificial light in our cabin to luminate ourselves. This time, I used less exposure time and ISO. I included a photo that I made in Photoshop by merging both of these photos together. The third photo was the view from inside the cabin. I used a tripod and remote to keep things steady and still. I used a long exposure for this shot to get a nice astrophotograph. Lastly I tried doing a night shot with my phone camera. I used a camera app that allows me to use the manual settings. This allowed me to have a slow shutter speed for my night shot. I did a 1 second shutter speed and used a tripod to hold my phone. it was difficult to get more light into the shot when using my phone. I struggled to get a good astrophotograph with my phone.
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