Night Landscapes
I thought I’d start a discussion on this after getting some questions about shooting at night in the contest thread from Blizzard. If anyone else has tips they want to share please jump in!
1. Shoot RAW! - if your camera can do it, use it! Gives you a heap more to work with afterwards.
2. Use a tripod and if you have one, a remote cable - vibrations are baddddd. If your camera has a delay mode you can use that too, basically works the same. Some people will tell you that you MUST use mirror lock-up, but I honestly have not found a difference from it.
3. Clear cold nights are best, and try to get as far away from the lights from towns and cities as you can.
4. Exposure times - keep under 1 minute for still stars, and from there on up you can experiment for the amount of streak you like.
5. Manual Focus - bring a torch to illuminate the area so you can focus accurately if you have foreground elements in your frame.
6. Keep an eye on your lens - fog and mist can easily ruin your images.
7. Lens choice - the longer the lens the faster your exposures need to be to minimise trails. Conversely, a ultra-wide lens will take longer to produce trails.
8. Aperture and ISO - Shoot wide open or close to it, you want to allow as much light in as possible. And keep your ISO down, as noise can be a bitch at night.
9. Get out there and try, trial and error is the best way to learn. Frustrating but very rewarding.
10. Beware the refreeze if you decide to go riding on your way down!!!
As for Deano’s guess on the moonbaking shot in the contest thread - it’s only one exposure. I’ll let you stew on the how for a bit and if you can get close I’ll let you know. Gotta keep the mystery going!
I’d love to hear if anyone has tried mixing long exposures with action shots using flash and pocketwizards - I’ve had a fair few fails this winter so far…
And cos this thread is useless without photos:
so pretty!!! awesomes!!
bish = awesome! Thanks man, now just gotta wait till I am at the snow overnight again to try this!!!
No worries man! Let me know if there’s anything else. And have fun!!!
look up grant gunderson for long night exposure plus flashed action
Sweet thanks Gamblor!!!
here ya go:
http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/tag/grant-gunderson
the last shot with bryce phillips skiing
Cheers Gamblor, have seen Grant’s work before - amazing stuff! Definitely the level of photography I aspire to reach one day. Long way off though!
The main problem I’ve found so far is that part of the background keeps showing up through my rider, giving a ghosted look. Not enough power on the flash compared to allowing too much ambient light in is what I’m guessing I’ve done wrong - will be trying again next week.
As for Deano’s guess on the moonbaking shot in the contest thread - it’s only one exposure. I’ll let you stew on the how for a bit and if you can get close I’ll let you know. Gotta keep the mystery going
I know close to nothing about photography and working with slr based cameras. But trying to work out how you get the look you do from your one expousre.
Do you start off with no flash or anything in the forground of the of the shot, so you are just getting the light from the sky/stars/background, and then later in the time frame of the exposure you introduce the person and have a flash/flashes on them to get the light reflecting of the foreground features?or what i have said vice versa
Not sure if it even works like this, but you have me very curious as to how it works.
here ya go:
http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/tag/grant-gunderson
the last shot with bryce phillips skiing
Wow!
OMG Those are the prettiest pictures i’ve ever seen!!!!
if you search for that photo, he explains how he did it. I can’t remember where I saw it though. Maybe espn.com or the teton gravity forums. It’s a couple of years old
wow, that last shot is amazing on that blog!
sorry i forgot about the question at the start.
the 2 main ways i would ahve done it would be my first suggestion of stitching 2 shots together or along the lines of what K2 suggested.
the skier one in that blog i assume is he left the shutter open for a while to get the star trails then activated the flash as the skier came into view and closed the shutter instantly*
*thats if he used one exposure.
The Grant Gunderson shot I’ve read somewhere is a 4-hour exposure, with the flash triggered as the start of the shot. Would’ve been a cold wait to see if the shot turned out!
The one I shot, which is completely cr*p compared to his, is a 1 minute exposure, using the very bright lights of the village around Hotham Central to the right of frame to give illumination to the foreground. You can see the effect pretty clearly by checking the shadows in the first photo I posted in this thread.
The other shots are hidden by the terrain from the glow from the village, and are just lit by the moon. All just one exposure, with some experimenting in post to pull out some more detail here and there. If you don’t overdo it you can make a much nicer print than just the original image straight from camera. I love RAW! 
i only shoot in raw these days. the versatility it gives you in post is awesome.
mind you i dont shoot nearly enough!
The Grant Gunderson shot I’ve read somewhere is a 4-hour exposure, with the flash triggered as the start of the shot. Would’ve been a cold wait to see if the shot turned out!
the thing im struggling to comprehend is if the flash/rider is shot at the start…how come there is no ghosting of the rider? ids it that because after the flash finished…“flashing” for lack of a better word, it was too dark to pick up the rider?