Night Visions

[ksmattfish]

Two from Tuesday night.

camera: Canon 20D

Moses and the burning bush.

Campanille tree

 

[LaFoto]

Being a big fan of stained glass windows, I cannot but like the first photo. Exposure is spot on! And I like how you include that sculpture (?) into your frame ... is that supposed to be Moses and the Burning Bush is only in the window? Where did you find it? And what is the Moses figure made of?

And being a fan of the light that only a setting (or rising) sun can give you, I must like the second photo, too. I would have loved to see that one as a larger photo!

 

[HoboSyke]

That 1st shot is very cool. Did you use partial metering ?

 

[ksmattfish]

... is that supposed to be Moses and the Burning Bush is only in the window? Where did you find it? And what is the Moses figure made of?

And being a fan of the light that only a setting (or rising) sun can give you, I must like the second photo, too. I would have loved to see that one as a larger photo!

The sculpture is Moses, and the burning bush is the stained glass window. This is located on the University of Kansas campus. The sculptor is Eldon Tefft. I think the sculpture is made of bronze, as are most of his works. The lattice/filigree is his style. I've seen a few of his works, and they are all fantastic. Moses is the largest piece I've seen done by him. In real life, not counting the pedestal, kneeling Moses must be 8' or 10' tall. I don't know who did the stained glass work, but it's fantastic too.

The tree photo was taken at 11:00pm. The red light is caused by huge, powerful sodium vapor lights reflected off the side of a tower called the campanille. The campanille is a bell tower, that plays tunes automatically like a clock, although apparently there is a keyboard (or something) inside, and occasionally they have a campanille player come and do concerts. Nothing like a musical instrument 100' high.

 

[ksmattfish]

That 1st shot is very cool. Did you use partial metering ?

With the 20D I initially use the center weighted averaging metering mode; often I frame a scene that I think is close to middle grey (in the same sort of lighting as my scene), and then use exposure lock, and recompose. Then I check the histogram to decide if I need to alter the exposure.

For night shots like this one I try to see if I can get a recommendation from the meter with a wide open aperture (since the meter will only go up to a 30 sec exposure). Then I double the time for each stop I'm closing the lens down, and take a shot, check the histogram, and add more time if necessary. The tree shot was a 2 minute exposure.

EDIT: The tree shot didn't look at all like this in reality. To my eyes it was very dark, with just a hint of warmth on some reflective bits. But I knew those lights had to be casting some crazy light. I set the white balance to daylight, and this image is barely adjusted from what the camera picked up; I adjusted contrast slightly (less than I normally do), and sharpened.

I've always been interested in the way a camera sees artificial light, particularly with long exposures. With film it wasn't so exciting, because of the time between the experiment and seeing what I got. I'm going to play around with this a lot more now with the 20D.

 

[ksmattfish]

Here is a more straight on photo of the sculpture.

 

[HoboSyke]

:thumbup: nicre

 

[John E.]

Good exposures, love the way you caught the light in both pictures, espeacially the warm tones on the tree.

 

[Randog]

Very nice shots, Excellent work!

 

[photo gal]

Very nicely done! Like La Foto I too love stained glass and you did a mighty fine job with these~

 

[JTHphoto]

nice shots. the tree is great, the colors remind me of an old renaissance painting or something... i can see satyrs and nymphs lying under this mythical tree...

 

[Raymond J Barlow]

all very excellent shots!

 

[JonK]

Love the muted tones and composition in the tree shot.
and the colours in the first are outstanding.