Ottawa Lumiere Festival of Lights – Full Camera Skills Needed

The Ottawa annual Lumiere Festival of Lights is not just a wonderful events for kids and spectators it's also a great chance to get some interesting and new photos for your collection.

 ISO 400; f6.3; 13 sec; -0.67ev; 123mm; tripod mounted; Nikon D300

This is my 3rd time attending this event and each and every time I go there is something new to see. The festival is all about light and for this event it means candle power. There are activities for kids in the leading-up week where they make wonderful colorful paper mache objects that have holders inside to take those small candles in metal cans. These candles go inside the object and are lit at dusk. This creates a wonderful glow emanating for the colorful paper mache objects.

ISO 2,500 f5.6; 1 sec;  48mm

Hundreds of these lit lanterns in the shape of many different forms from faces to animals line the many paths around New Edinburgh park in Ottawa.

For the photographer it's visually stunning but also provides many photographic challenges in order to capture the event as the night unfolds.

When you first arrive around 7:30pm, you are at the golden hour of light and normal settings gets most of these shots.  You may need a bit of fill light from your flash and here an attached strobe flash is necessary to get just enough light to fill area and the ability to reduce the exposure (-ev) so as to not over power the ambient light.  See image of man on stilts below.

 

ISO 200; f5.6; 1/60 sec; 40mm; Flash -1ev

With hundreds of kids moving around and depending on their activity in front of you, a long exposure shot may create interesting photo image. The children in the image below are playing a large chess game. I wanted to show motion blur to create effect of action within the photo.

ISO 80; f25; 3 sec; 32mm

As dusk starts to envelope a more  stronger flash is necessary to freeze motion and completely fill subject as with the Tango dancer.

ISO 200; f5.6; 1/60 sec; 100mm; Flash

There are other areas like the lit swans in the river where flash won't work and a long exposure is needed to amplify available light to avoid the noise of higher ISOs. But when there is some wind movement then you will need the higher ISOs as in the photo below. In these photos it's all about the soft glow of candle power.

ISO 2,500; f5.6; 0.3 sec;  -0.3ev; 190mm; tripod mounted

ISO 2,500; f5.6; 2 sec; -1ev; 28mm; tripod mounted

But a near full darkness only longer exposure times and a tripod will get you those interesting photos like the girls with their glowing and twirling hula hoops.

The main event at this festival is a giant maze on a baseball diamond (to reduce chance of grass fire) covered with lunch paper bags filled with a little sand for stability and then a small candle. There are hundreds of children walking around this maze but with long exposures they do not show up in the photo because of their darkness. It's only when they are carrying candles or light that they show up as a moving white line.

ISO 1,000; f5.6; -1ev; 3sec; 1230mm; tripod mounted

At this event I did use my new Nikon D800e and I found it worked well. I did forget to bring my small flashlight to light the buttons on the camera.  Thankfully there remained mostly the same from the D300 and I could with some ease figure where to press to make changes to seetings.

In summary for an event like this you need to be able to switch between:
Aperture, Shutter priority and Manual mode – Flash will freeze when necessary.
Low and high ISOs.
Normal shutter speeds and long exposures of 2-3 seconds.
Flash power adjustments for fill light strengths.
Hand-held and tripod shooting.

I do hope you all get a chance to try events like these or a an amusement park or fair ground.

Niels Henriksen

The Eye, the Brain and the Camera

The eye and the brain and the magical interconnections between them creates wonderful light recording system, or its the one we have become accustomed to. The eye only sees detail at about the size of the thumbnail on a fully extended arm. The rest of the field of vision is ever decreasing resolution (less cones) as it moves out from the centre of vision whereas the camera for the most part has perfect resolution across field of view. 

Where the eye really has it though, is when unmeasurably small refocusing speeds our eyes over the full field of view which makes it appear as one image. It's the brain that processes the eye's information, in a manner that appears to us, as infinite DOF and resolution through field of view. The brain is very complex in its processing of visual information. We really don't see all the detail that we think we do.

There is a great book 'Vision of Seeing' the biology of seeing.

Amazon Link:

Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing

It's no wonder, at times, that the image captured by a camera does not quite fit in with what we remember we saw, which is different from what we actually saw. This is the great part about enhancing photos. It allows us to bring to life those parts that captured our imagination.

The soft blue/purple of the stones compliment well with the yellows/oranges in the highlights.

On one Friday evening I was heading out to the Byward Market in Ottawa to hopefully get some interesting B&W shots of dark alleys with lots of mood and mystery. At least that was my goal.

I arrived at 7:30pm in order to find a parking spot and even then it took a while, as by 9:00pm the market, which by then are the bars and bistros, start to hum with people.

At sunset, about 8:30, I started to scout out suitable alleys or courtyards for my image theme when I came across this man sleeping on a bench in a courtyard under a canopy of trees.

It wasn’t completely twilight dark at this time but even with a fast 2.8 VR lens set at ISO 640 @ f4.0, at 100mm I would still needed a tripod, as the shutter speed was 1/9 s.

The above photo is a camera RAW image and as you can see, it is a bit brighter due to large amount of dark areas going to mid-grey value with exposure readings. This turns out to be a benefit as when the image is darkened, those areas will have its noise reduced proportionally.

In my mind I had a different picture; darker surrounding areas with a light streaming on the gentleman. Darker foreground and removal of the cigarette butts.

The problem was, it was not quite dark enough when the photo was taken. When I returned in about 20 minutes later, the man was getting up so there was no opportunity to retake this shot and you have to go with what you captured.

Below is the Layers I used to achieve the effect.

I tend to use a separate layer for each effect or localized area that needs to be adjusted. This is why it is easier to fine-tune the image as a whole.

As I am examining image possibilities with design ideas I save a version (cntrl-alt-sft-E) I like. See top of stack.

This is a B&W version blended with a more contrasty colour I also enjoy.

 

Niels Henriksen

What is Creativity?

Tough question, almost as hard as asking “What is the meaning of life?”

There is a general consensus of some parts and with my own experiences I will try and give my insights.

For the most part I think every human has innate creativity built within his or her collective genes. It is part of what truly makes us human and able to enjoy the richness and splendor of everyday life.

I also think that there is a formula that helps us unleash, expand and bring to life our creative thoughts.

Creative expressions = Desire + opportunity + technical skills

I am not really sure whether it is Plus, Boolean or other funny mathematical operators but the order does show relative importance, as I understand it.

The images I am displaying here are from an evening where I walked about looking for things that interested me.  Wasn’t sure what would develop but that was the fun part and it lead to one image I really liked and seemed to work that I wrote about in this article.

What I Saw, My Camera Captured and What My Mind Thought it Saw .

There was something that attracted me with the light at the door and walls peering through the trees.  Not every image can be a best seller and some are just for me to enjoy.

Desire

This is the key element and without this the other 2 don’t mean much.
It’s often called by other names such as passion, inspiration or even the muses.
It doesn’t have to be big or grand, just a willingness or urge to take something that stirs the mind and unfolds it for you or others in a form where they can see the same vision.

Since you are reading this article and probably other blogs, then the desire is already strong now.

 The lights provided an interesting lead into the bistro and the end of the alley. I just wish that there had been a couple sitting to really ad that strong interest.

Opportunity

For me this is the key element. Opportunity can be pure happenstance where by luck you have a camera with you and then the right scene at the right time presents itself.
This is great when it happens but what is the success rate with this mode?

Success can be increased. It is a lot like fitness training whereby the more you train the more you can do, both in the gym and in your everyday life.

Why not apply fitness-training techniques to your photographic and artistic growth. This part is not learning technical skills with the camera or understanding compositions, it is a lot like endurance training. IF you run a full marathon, as opposed to a half, you get to see more along the route.

That’s why I wrote this article, as a lead-in to the series of “10 photographic projects” that I firmly believe will help. I was going to write my standard one page article listing 10 projects that will help you improve your abilities to create.

I was concerned that to give it proper scope it would be too long and not enough of you would read all of it. Many blog readers tend to skim after a few paragraphs.

Therefore, I will provide more detail for each of these photo projects so that I can better articulate the benefits and joys and sometimes frustrations with each project. Some will only contain one project, others may include 2. These will also be of a greater frequency (2-3 days apart) than I normally produce to ensure that interest remains strong.

I came across a group taking night photography lessons. The tripod just seemed to compliment the legs of the giant spider.  With the slow shutter, you will see some people who are clear as they stood still and others blurry who were moving. I couldn’t find an image that was really strong, as I would have had to move the tripods of the other photographers and since it was a walk about, I didn’t feel like asking each one of them. Maybe next time.

Technical skills

I find this part has 2 components:

Skill with camera: being able to capture the image as desired by using exposure, DOF, focal length, shutter speed. There are many blogs that will help you here, such as

Digital Photography School
Epic Edits
Your Photo Tips

Compositional skills: Understanding how lines, shapes, colours, contrast, soft and hard edges, subject position all help the viewer to move the eye around the image and thereby creating a stronger story or emotion from your image.

George Barrr has written several books on creativity  and provides this advice on  Behind The Lens

These are focus of most of my articles.

I can’t say that I have all the right answers or even understand it completely. Not sure anyone does, but it has been my passion all my life and along that journey I learned some things that I enjoy sharing with you.  Even to this date I still learn from you and others, which is the great part about the blogging community.




Niels Henriksen

Night Photography – Ottawa’s Lumière Festival

Once a year in Stanley Park, Ottawa has a festival of lights, music and magic. This grand visual display is called the Lumière (French for light) Festival. This large park along the Rideau River is bedecked with all shapes and sized coloured paper candle lit lanterns.

The festival organizers, I imagine volunteers, create some rather stunning and tall (over 7 ft) coloured paper lanterns in the shapes of fairy like objects. Local supporters, and I know because I’ve seen some regulars, have their own light displays set up along the many paths in the park.

The visitors make and bring their own lanterns and there are a few for sale at the site as the bottom image shows.

75mm, f5.0, f5.0, iso 400, 1/60 sec

The festival starts to get underway around 4:00pm with only a few people starting to arrive. The main event doesn’t happen until after dusk (9:30pm).


Lens Choices

While the night shots would involve the use of the tripod and long exposure times, I chose a heavier lens for the first part of the evening. There is still natural light however, that light is obstructed by the many trees lining the pathways.

The lens used was a Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 vr to give me the extra light capturing ability around dusk, as I learned from pervious years that when there is a lot going on, this allows me to quickly point and shoot. I also bumped up the iso to 400 for more light as with this setting there is no noticeable noise with the Nikon D300.

When I switched to the tripod I chose the Nikon 18-200mm, f3.5 vr lens. I knew for some shots, with all the people around, I would need a wide-angle lens and get in close to not have people block my view.

200mm, f5.6 iso 400, _1 ev comp, 1/125sec

At first impression you might think that I have oversaturated the green in this many-sided triangular hanging. I did increase saturation but only slightly because if you start to over sat then you also loose the subtle tonal transitions, here in the greens and yellows.
I used a technique form my painting experience where you can alter any colour by what is placed next to it.

I darkened and de-saturated all the green foliage to make this object appear more vivid. I increased the saturation of the purple flower slightly to give some balance with the strong green colour. If all the remainder of the scene were de-saturated then the green object would seem out of place. Almost cut out. It needs some anchor points in the scene. I did also rotate the direction of the person on the right, to be entering the scene as opposed to leaving it.

handheld, 18mm, f3.8, iso 400, .5 sec

This is a 6 ft display of skyscrapers made of blue tissue paper with other colours glued on. One benefit of this time of night, while this path is packed elbow to elbow because of the darkness they don’t show up unless they are carrying a lit lantern. I had several versions of this location, but I chose this because the dark blue sky helps to add some abstractness to the already abstract blue towers. You can see the other lanterns dotting the pathways.

Tripod, 26mm, f3.8, iso 400, 2 sec

One of my favorites of the evening is this image where the petals are picking up the glow from the yellow light. The yellow tip of the flower is 7ft tall with the petals going higher.

This image is 2110x 350 when you click on the above thumbnail

A composite of the many different hanging lanterns found along the paths. In the last image, the cones are 6ft tall.

The Grand finale


tripod, 150mm, f10.0, iso 400, 5 secs

This festival is really about the grand finale, a baseball diamond filled with brown paper lunch bags with sand in the bottom and a lit candle that, in all, form a giant walking maze. All the kids and parents snake in a long procession through the intricate loops in the maze.


tripod, 150mm, f10.0, iso 400, 5 secs

If you examine carefully near the top left, you will see ghost like outlines from people who had lighter clothing on. People with dark clothing don’t show up at all. From this viewpoint it almost appears as there is no rhyme or reason to route through maze.

With a slightly different camera angle some of the curved paths start to show up.

tripod, 150mm, f10.0, iso 400, 2.5 secs

This festival is a huge hit for parents with kids. Before it gets totally dark, there are numerous entertainers from outdoor plays. Some with stilted costume performers, singers, folk dances, jugglers, and many other strange things you find at lighted fairy nights.

For camera buffs, and there are many that show up, this is a great chance to photograph very unique and colourful people and objects and later on some truly great night photography.

Niels Henriksen





Related posts

Ottawa Luminère Festival a Night of Magic Light

Night Lights – Slow Shutter


Ottawa Lumiere Festival

Tivoli – Photographing Laser Light Show & Night Photography

Tivoli is an old style garden and amusement park in the downtown core of Copenhagen Denmark. There are many novel cafés and ethnic restaurants (29). There is even live theatre, mostly Hans Christian Andersen stories, trapeze artists, pantomimes, and ballets and concerts mainly performed during the summer. It is open all year round but I don’t know about hoping on a wild ride while the temperature is around the freezing point.

The park was opened in 1843 by the writer-architect Georg Carstensen (1812–59) on the southern part of the old city. A remnant of the former moat became a lake for boating. It still has a feel from that period.

With Tivoli’s extensive flower gardens, fireworks, coloured floodlights, and illuminated fountains, which all tend to brighten the park at night, I thought this would be a good place to take some night photography in between bouts of pure amusement.

Tivoli sits on a one block site and for those walking on the side of the street you wouldn’t even know that it existed except for the main gates and a couple of times you can see these 200 ft towers sticking up.

f3.5, iso 800 .4 sec, 18mm

I set the ISO to 800 which for the D300 gives very low noise visibility and still allowed to capture most of the shots between 1/30 and 1/50sec which I could hand hold with the added vibration reduction on lens.

The top image, I laid the camera on a fence rail as I needed more than ½ sec to really capture some background detail.

f5.6, 1/30, iso 800 170mm

Close-up of central part of light effects. It has almost a curtain like feel and wonderful moving green luminescent patterns.

Thanks to my relatives because they knew the time the laser light show was to start and the best place to position ourselves (on the bridge over the pond) for the best view of the show.

Ten minutes before the start of the show, huge fog guns were filling the pond with huge clouds for the light to strike. We were lucky this night as there was not much wind.

f4.5, 1/30, iso800, 46mm

f4.5, 1/30sec, iso800, 18mm

This image is more of a wide angle showing the layers of fog and the lights striking it. I did add the red center as it was all green. I did this by adding a new layer and painted the central part Red and set the blend mode of color. I tried a rainbow circular gradient but it was a bit too outlandish.

f4.8, 1/30sec, iso800, 55mm

The one thing I like about the above image is that on first impression, I thought I shot this upside down. But it is correct. The lights on the water radiate up and now hit the lifting fog bank.

f4.5, 1/40sec, iso800, 18mm

Many of the buildings are gloriously lit at night. In fact, most of the park is one large visual feast.

f4.5, 1/50sec, iso800, 36mm

On one side of the park are these giant hanging sheets of lights and the above image was an attempt to capture these with some depth.

f4.5, 1/50sec, iso800, 18mm

At the end of the evening we stepped back out on the normal Copenhagen streets and for one image I was able to capture all the street lights turned green. This scene is in stark contrast to the brightly lit park which is very crowded and now this normal street seems like a surreal world almost Outer Limits in theme.



My wife and I did try some of the exiting (scary) rides and while I was able to test one more the 200ft vertical drop, she actually faired better during the course of the ride. The picture below, taken by the amusement park, shows how I was hanging on for my dear life, while she was grinning with excitement. I was enjoying it.



After this ride we went on the H.C. Andersen ride in a chest through his stories. A lot slower and safer on the body!



Niels Henriksen

Printing Your Own Business Cards and Book Marks

Since this belongs to a Photography Blog, I feel that I should at least insert a few pretty ordinary pictures even if I am going to discuss printing your own business cards and bookmarks.

On Friday night the moon was at its closest distance to earth (4 hours after perigee) when it sis 14% bigger and 30% brighter at 5:00pm EST Dec 12. I had planned to be out at sunset to take images but got distracted with the constant cleaning up we are doing with some construction work that’s still ongoing. It was to take a week and now we are entering our 4th week of dust, dust and more dust.

When I went out to get the paper this morning, the moon was just starting to disappear over the western horizon and I remembered the perigee thing and grabbed my camera to capture a few images.


There were crows flying past the moon but not exactly where they are now. I combined 2 other images and placed the birds where I thought they would have good effect. Since the light was changing I used the curves tools and eyedropper to ensure that the blue around the birds where identical to the background. I set one control point to background and the other on the blue near bird. I then used a curve adjustment layer and tweaked individual the Red/Green/Blue channels to match the numbers on the background. The reason I did it with this method is that with the moving birds there is a bit of blur near edges and it is difficult to extract just the dark parts without picking up a bit of the background colour at the edges. This approach will give you a perfect match. The contrast of the moon was increased slightly. The sun is just striking the treetops and giving it a red glow.


This was taken a few minutes earlier at a faster shutter speed.


Making Cards and Finding a Good Case




If you own Nikon equipment then there are these beautiful stainless steel cases made for Nikon eyeglasses that come with a cleaning cloth. They make perfect business card holders. These were given to me but I am sure that any higher end optical glass wear stores might give or sell them cheaply to you.

I am surprised that they don’t come with the purchase of a high end Nikon camera.

I use Photoshop to make and print my own business cards on semi-gloss photo paper, as I like the feel and look of these cards. The only problem is that I can’t print on the back.

I create a Photoshop layered file with several images and a different layer for the different fonts and word colours. I also create a thin black border that will form a cutting guide for each of the cards.


I then create a picture package under the automated command and create a template that reduces each photo to a 2.5” x 3” card and places 8 cards on an 8x10” sheet.


The master file has several images that I use so I can create various versions. See image below where I have combined them.


I use a sharp drywall utility knife and a metal edged ruler to cut out each card along the black lines. This is a bit labour intensive but I do like the quality of each card.

Now the Shameless part

Whenever I am in a magazine store reading photography magazines and I notice another person who seems interested in photography, I ask them if they read photography blogs and if the conversation continues I will ask them if they want a card to my site and if nothing else it makes a good book mark.

Yesterday I was in a multi-goods store and there were some people looking at cameras. I spoke to them to see if they need any help with camera selection and afterwards handed out one of my cards.

I never hand these out without having some dialogue with the person and I also determine first if they are interested in reading Photography blogs.



Larger Bookmarks



I also print vivid landscapes and cut them into strips and laminate them, yellow represents the clear plastic, and I hand these out to friends as 8” long bookmarks.

Easy to make Christmas or any type of gift for people whom like to read books. These have no advertising on them.














Niels Henriksen

Crazy Hot Air Balloon

The other night just after the sun had set I looked out the large kitchen window, which gazes upon the Ottawa city green belt (natural tracks of land within the city boundaries), and the whole sky at first was a brilliant flaming RED.

It took a second or 2 to realize that a hot air balloon was just about to land a few hundred feet past my backyard.

I quickly screamed out to my wife “Look, Look” as I ran downstairs to grab my camera.

I ripped open my bag and as I race up I am already adjusting the iso to about 1,000 as it is already dusk and I knew there was not enough light to hand hold at slower iso.

I run out the back door and and take a few clicks as I am trying to get through the hedge. From the shutter sound I already know that this iso is not fast enough. Quickly crank it up to 6400 as I want to get a few shots as they are still applying the flame to turn the balloon for a proper deflate.

F5.6, iso 6,400, 1/60 sec at 170mm

Don’t ask me why I am not checking the shutter speed in the viewfinder but I guess panic takes over for common sense.

It is then I realize I am still in my stocking feet on the cold wet ground. Thank goodness that I have a vibration reduction lens because at that focal length and crop factor I should be shooting faster than 1/250 sec.

I went back inside to put some shoes on and as I am heading out again they are starting to deflate the balloon. I use a wider lens settings which gives me more light and I can now drop the iso 3200 for better noise control

iso 3200, f5.6, 1/8 sec, 44mm

The above shot I do manage to hand hold down to 1/8 sec and still remain sharp. But there were a few images which were quite blurry. The interesting thing about cameras is that for the second shot it is actually darker outside, but because of the longer shutter duration it appears a lot brighter than the first image. This is almost night photography as the first image actually represents the real darkness I saw, while I was taking these images.


Are there images of you as a Photographer?



One thing about photographers is that we do tend to have a lot of images but very few if any of ourselves.

During an Ottawa Camera club outing which I had organized late one cold November one of the members took an image of me taking a photo.




This is an old abandoned building and through the window above you can see one of the inner walls and a doorway, which makes the open window seem strange.

The object of my desire or attention is shown below.




The window frame was burnt and I love the textures and patterns created by the charred wood and the bright cloudy sky adding highlights to the edges.


Niels Henriksen

Heddal Church Norway - D300 at ISO 6400

The completely wooden Heddal Stave church just outside Notodden Norway gave a good opportunity to test out the capabilities of the D300 at iso 6400. I did bring my tripod with me but for the many day excursions it was a lot easier to just attach the Nikon 18-200mm vr lens and increase the iso to compensate for low light situations.




These Stave churches were built from the early 11th century to the 15th century. At one time there were approximately 800 to 1,000 of these churches built and now only 25 remain. Since these are built entirely of wood many were easily destroyed by fire.

iso 6400, 1/40 sec, f4.5, 24.0mm

This is a view from inside the main chapel. There is no electrical light in the church and it is all lit by the window openings at the top and a few candles near the altar. It is extremely dim inside and a perfect test for the camera capabilities. The metal tubes you see in this image are part of the current sprinkler system to prevent it from being burnt. On the outside along the entire roof sections are other sprinkler nozzles.

Being all wood it was easy to limit the colour noise by de-saturating the colour a bit and then adding a light reddish brown layer set to colour to bring out the warm tones. In Adobe Raw I did set the colour and noise to almost max settings.

This is the Heddal church, built in the12trh century, is a triple stave church and is now the largest remaining church.


Close-up view of the outside hand cut shingles covering all the roof and wall sections.

ISO 6400, 1/40 sec, f4.5 , 24.0mm

The above image is of the altar, which is mostly lit by candles and the top window light does not reach into the altar enclave.

iso 6400, 1/20 sec, f4.5, 24.0mm

In the image above you can see the rose painting covering the inside walls. This painting covers some of the more Norse Viking type scenes that originally decorated the walls. It was repainted with the new abstract patterns as the Viking images became out of favour and the Christian teachings and Viking mythology slowly disappeared.

You will notice how the WB has changed from the walls at top being lit by outside light and the post at bottom being lit by candles and therefore a redder tone.

iso 6400, 1/30 sec, f5.0, 24.0mm

Around the bottom of the church is a corridor that runs around the whole of the chapel and there are different doors to go in. This is part of the carvings that surround these giant 10 foot doors.



Near the church is a site where they have moved several log cabins as an historic site. You can see the brightly lit rose painting or rosemailing. This is the same as in the church but here we have many windows that provide more light into the interior.



This is a shed on the site but the larger log cabins are built the same method.
You will notice that the log cabin sits on stills and then there is a log split in half and with a flat side on the bottom. This is to prevent rodents from getting into the houses. Note how the steps do not attach to the building, which also keeps them out.

The D300 does a good job of image capture at the higher iso setting of 1600, 3200, and 6400. They are nosier than lower settings but still produce great shots. If you shoot with film and I think the highest was 3200 B&W, these shots would normally not be possible and if you did have very fast film the grain would be very pronounced. I do like the B&W film grain better as the luminance speckles were more random in size and tended to produce better patterns.

You do need to use the luminance and colour noise reduction to improve it. The use of sharpening is not recommended, as it will enhance the noise.

The best method is still to use a tripod and go for longer exposure, but when not possible having an image stabilized lens and high iso, you now are able to get very reasonable images that would not be normally possible.


Niels Henriksen