The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through them.
-Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables
And I was so excited! I live in a rural area with lots of lovely fields and farms and meadows, with sky that's deep and wide and speckled with stars.... I had the end result of my photo in mind as soon as I read the quote above. It was going to be gorgeous. I did extensive location scouting; in the end I had about six places in mind: Expansive fields out away from town; flat fields; sloping fields; fields ending in a line of trees; some with street lights, some without.
I should get hazard pay for this assignment: At one point during the selection process I turned off the highway onto an unplowed country road to turn around -- the snow didn't seem all that deep -- but I only got my front two wheels into it before I realized I was in trouble. I put the floor mats under the tires for traction, dug snow out from behind the wheels with my bare hands, then hopped back in and tried to reverse ... but no luck. Apparently the Honda Odyssey is not meant for off-roading in the off season. (Who knew?) Our adventure (I say our because of course the girls were with me, lol) ended ~20 minutes later when a truck full of elderly hunters stopped to help. Three old men in camo jumpsuits and orange vests kindly gave us a shove and we were on the road again.
All that craziness aside, the biggest challenge for this assignment turned out to be the weather: It's been cloudy most days and every single night since last Wednesday. *Sigh!* But I did the best I could. Last night I trekked out with my camera, tripod, and remote shutter release and stood around in the cold trying to get a decent shot. I bumped the ISO as far as it would go (1600 in my camera's case) for maximum sensitivity (but also some noise/grain) and used my smallest (right? the highest number?) aperture (f/16) to get the star shaped streetlights.
It isn't the picture I had in mind when I first received the challenge, and I don't think it really reflects the quote at all, but on its own I guess it's not that bad. I hope.
In any case, I reserve the right to revisit this assignment at a later date. :-)
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Mary, for your next challenge I want to see some complimentary colors! Can't wait to see what you come up with! :-)
~RCH~
5 comments:
I love how the street lights look like stars.
I was just going to say the same thing. Beautiful shot.
D'oh...I was gonna say that too. I don't even know how to do NORMAL stuff with a camera, let alone how to make stars. You are amazing.
The secret is in the f-stop! And I just learned it myself a couple weeks ago:
For nice blurry round lights, use your smallest number f-stop (1.8 on some of my lenses, ~4.5 on others); for star shaped lights (or sun flare or whatever), go to the other end of the spectrum (f/16 on some, including the lens I used on this pic, and f/29 on one of my other lenses -- ymmv depending on your equipment).
Of course, with every adjustment you make to aperture (your f-stops) you'll need to make corresponding adjustments in either ISO or shutter speed. The easiest thing to do is to put your camera on aperture priority setting (if it has one) so that you can set the specific f-stop for the result you want, and then the camera adjusts the other two elements to get a good exposure. Or you can do it all in manual mode, and just mess around until you get what you're looking for! (So much easier in the days of digital than it ever would have been with film!)
I must say, that is a rad picture. Good job.
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