Shooting in the Dark

 This is the last week of an amazing light show by Bruce Munro at Cheekwood Gardens in Nashville, Tennessee. I had the privilege to photograph some of the lights in the show last night. 

The image I am sharing with you is one of my favorite. The colored teepees you see are actually tubes of light that alternate within each teepee. They do not light all at once.  However, if you set your camera for a time exposure, you catch them all lit during the exposure. 

Another wonder with time exposure just after sunset is that the tiny bits of light that remain
and are not detectable to our eyes, accumulate in the exposure, creating a soft light on the west horizon. Having a reflecting pond, some trees and split rail fence for silhouette as well as lights on a mansion in the background, create an abundance of interest in the image.

To create the first image, I shot with a Canon 5D Mark II with a 28-135mm
lens on a tripod (an absolute necessity).  

My ISO was set at 200 because I wanted a lot of dark to contrast with the lights. If I had shot at a high ISO it would have looked more like dusk. My focal length was 28 mm (to give
me a wide angle). My exposure was 15 seconds, and my aperture was f/8.0.

The second image is a composite of two images. One image was the fiber-optic ball and the other was a field of fiberoptic sprays created to look like the light of fireflies. I have plans to play with these images to create an outer space image.

Playing with light in the dark is an amazing and fun activity. Whatever your genre of photography, always experiment with different and new things. You never know where it may lead you!

Your Thursday Ambassador