PhotoProject :: In Search of the Blue Hour

The past two night have had the classic crescent moon close to a bright planet Venus not long after sunset. This is the blue hour when you can get some wonderful photos as the sky is still partly light and the deep sky is still a little blue not yet black. However this is the time of extended long exposures, so A tri[od is pretty essential, and keeping if vibration free can be a hassle. First step is turning off the anti-shake and the second trick is to use the self timer (I just use the 2 second delay). The other big issue at night is focusing, which can be a challenge for most autofocus system, so it if better to manually focus.Finally there is lost of advice about exposure setting for night scenes,and it a compromise between higher ISO (and inevitable higher noise) and lower F-stops (so decreasing depth of focus) and slow shutter speeds (giving high risk of camera movement blur). These compromises are not so well handled by the light meters in most camera, so it is usually much better to work in manual mode and take a few test shots.A similar configuration of the moon and venus will exist during the blue hour for the next couple of days.

Another Sand Goddess

Its the seventh day in a row the temperature has been over 30, so It was a perfect day for the beach and low with low tide close to midday was also a perfect day to rake another sand goddess. This one is based on one of the PRB Goddesses by Burne-Jones, with a profile portrait rather than front on view, this makes it quiet a challenge to “see” the image from the right place.


View 18/02/2013 10:50am sand goddess in a larger map

Another Sand Goddess

Another sand ranking loosely based on one of the goddess in the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood’s painting “The MIrror of Venus”

Sand Art

After Bottecelli's Birth of Venus

Sunlight on the waves

After the Transit of Venus, the clouds obscured the sun most of the afternoon but a few sunbeams managed to light up the distant wave.

PhotoProject :: The Transit of Venus

Venus at dusk

Photographing the night sky

Taking decent photos of the night sky with a digital camera is slightly harder than finding night mode. There is a fair bit of good advice on the net but it is mainly aimed at the use of traditional film in 35mm SLR cameras. Fast film, open the aperture right up and long exposures, even special film. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
 
The main checklist of important issue for the digital photographer are – 1) a tripod, to keep the camera steady during a long exposure, 2) a B (Bulb) setting (to allow extended time exposures) & 3) a cable release or remote control to avoid camera shake.  Then maybe turn off auto focus and set the focus manually to extreme distance and maybe take off that UV or skylight filter. There are a few good extra hints and tips here.

smiley face 2

The lunar, venus & jupiter alignment was visiable as the sun set so I took the opportunity to do a few multi-image series that I could splice together with autostitch. The panorama below was one of the last and I used the "night scene" mode, which unfortunately over exposed and blurred out the moon and the planets but it produced wonderful colours aqnd lighting.

smiley face 1

 
There is supposedly rare cosmic alignment going on right now. Happily the cresent moon, venus and jupiter are ligned up like a smiley, :) the universal emotion for happiness.