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uberMental Tip Of The Day: How To Play With Lights During Your Night Photography (Part 2)

Steps one, two and three are over here. Before we move on to step four I want to share my "Fuse" photograph from my recent night run to help explain how not to take a blurry photograph at night. The detour is necessary  since a couple of people expressed they had problems keeping their pictures clear of unwanted lighting effects and blurry focus. :-)

I want you to close your eyes and concentrate on your heartbeat and breathing. Your pulse and breath make your body move. As long as you are alive there will be some part of you moving. The trick is to sync your camera with your heartbeat and breath as if it is a part of you. Pushing the button is like pulling a trigger. When you take the shot, do so on a slow breath out and hold it, waiting to breath in after you hear the aperture of your lens click close. Your shot completes at the closing of the lens, not the pushing of the button (LOL).

If you relax and focus you will take a clear shot because your photography technique will improve by practicing a moment of stillness. Remind yourself that photographers tend to call their shots a "still." Time is standing still when you create your photographs. You should practice being still to take them as well... It also works for taking shots on the run and on a drive by if you get really good at timing your click and pause moments. A steady hand takes practice so go practice and remember to have fun with it.

Time for step four... I am going to open a few photographs, including the one I deliberately made blurry, so I could have a strange, cool lighting effect with a couple of interesting textures and contracts. I am going to combine them into a brand new imgage and do a bit of digital pixel painting to make a new graphic for my next post. If you downloaded the Photoshop trial like I suggested on my previous post, opening a picture file may resemble something like this:

I want you yo select four or five pictures and arrange them in layers. This is the part of the show where you can read your HELP FILES if you have never done this before. I can also provide screen shots if you can't figure out how to do it. I just don't want fifty photographs on one post. We may have to revert to filming this live (LOL). This is why you need to come to RainCamp. You'll learn stuff like this there. :-)

If you click on your layers it has a slide bar that lets you define how translucent they are. "Blending Option" is your help file category.

You can bleed and blend them into each other for some fun effects. Check this out:

Think of it as fusing photographs into a new illustration. Seriously... You too can be a graphic designer if you take the time to read your help files. It is as simple as that. Go try it. You may like it. Will have a new tip for you tomorrow. It's time to take the kids to school (LOL). :-)

Step One: Take a traditional night shot and pay very close attention to the timing of your digital camera's aperture click of the shutter.

Step Two: Just before the shutter clicks shut, make a tiny serpentine movement with your camera to squiggle the lights.

Step Three: Repeat steps one and two until you get something interesting that you like. Discard the rest and post those puppys on your blog. Shall show you how you can blend it in with other images this afternoon using Photoshop. Yes. You now have homework (LOL). Don't own Photoshop? Go to the Adobe.com website and download a free 30 day trial so you can play with me.

Class is in session. :-)

01/06/2010 Update: Step Four.