Monday, December 31, 2007

slow shutter night portraiture

Night photography is one field of photography where experience on time exposures will come in handy. In this type of photography, light meters or even metered camera settings of your high tech DSLR camera will not yield or give an accurate resulting image. In all likelihood, you will take your shots on a trial and error basis and adjust your settings accordingly depending on the results of the initial images taken by your digital camera.

On the photos given as samples, my goal is to get a properly exposed background for my models who should stand still for at least two seconds to prevent or minimize any movement while the shutter is letting in some light from the background. A desirable set up would be to mount the camera into a stable tripod and use a cable release trigger or set the camera's timer delay trigger to prevent any camera shake from affecting the clarity of the image. Don't forget to instruct your model to stand still for a few seconds even after the flash had long since fired.

The photos uploaded as samples were all taken on a time exposure of more than one second. The camera's flash was set to a rear curtain flash setting and was mounted to a tripod. Rear curtain fired flash means that the flash will fire right before the shutter closes as distinguished from front curtain flash firing where the flash is triggered immediately right after the shutter release button is pushed to the hilt.

The Creative Lighting System of my Nikon gave me a reliable and predictable results from its wireless flash photography. When shooting night images, white balance setting is also critical to appreciate the image you're taking. In these examples, my experience and familiarity with Kelvin settings provided a nearly accurate and desirable results of balancing cool and warm temperature settings for the image. For credits, I would like to thank Zette, Nadine and Darlene for this lingerie shoot and to Pam Dionisio for providing the venue and make-up services.