Photography Assignment #5

Nope, I didn’t screw up the title… I sort of haven’t done assignment #4 yet.  We’ll come back to it, I promise.  It was to do with learning about zoom features, which I already understood and just never made time to shoot.

Assignment #5 was WAY cooler anyway. :) Night time class field trip to Chinatown!

The goal was to practice learning which aperture and exposure to use in different lighting situations.  There were also some situations to play with our flash (which I avoid as much as possible!) and my favourite was playing with quick zoom shots (I’m sure there’s an actual name for this).

As I walked up the street to meet the class I saw a couple of signs that I knew I wanted to use as the subject for my first set of shots.  I wanted to capture the neon of the FanTan Cafe sign alongside the metal FanTan Alley street sign.  It was actually fun fiddling to get my tripod in the right position, my camera on the right angle, and then choosing the right settings.

Starting point:

Close-up no flash:

Close-up with flash:

I did take quite a number of shots but this final one ended up being my favourite because it captured both signs pretty much perfectly and I love how straight it is!

My next idea was a simple neon sign I saw in a window across the street. 

I played with the zoom as my camera captured the shot:

Neat right??  I shot these on F5.6 (Av mode…which gave a 1 sec. exposure).  When discussing them with my instructor he suggested trying a lower aperture like F22 or lower to give a REALLY long exposure…during which you turn your zoom REALLY slowly to get a super fun shot…like this:

In some regards it was too bad it was raining (I got wet and freezing cold pretty fast) but it actually worked for us as far as the lights and wet road and sidewalks went.

My favourite shot of the night:

So many different lights captured, almost perfectly straight (based on the light post on the left), sky and ground included…and the best part is that some of my classmates are actually in the shot! :)

I wish we had more fun lit up places like this in Victoria…I would totally go play around taking shots again.  It was fun!