Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Other than being superhumans, the ISS astronauts are also darn good at photography. They not only have the most amazing view, but they also have the skill required to turn that view into epic photos.
One of them is Don Pettit, a veteran of three spaceflights who spent over a year on the ISS. He recently joined Reddit and shared his photo of star trails which quickly went viral. And no wonder, as it’s not only a photo taken in space – it’s also a super-creative one.
Star-stacking timelapses are amazing, and so are the thunderstorm timelapses. But when you have both in a single frame, it’s simply breathtaking. Maui-based photographer Joe Domrad has created a timelapse like this, and it’s a real treat for the eyes.
I’ve always been inspired by the night sky. But I always thought that it would be difficult to shoot. And I guess it was not easy way way back, but today’s tech makes it easy twice: new sensors are extremely sensitive to light and are producing great high-iso, low noise results. This opened up a whole new area of photography for me – night sky photography.
Back to the story…
Star trails have become a very popular photography subject, especially with the high ISO performance offered by some cameras over the last few years, but few will have the opportunity of creating them from such unimpeded views as the International Space Station.
Don Pettit is one of those few, stacking short exposures of the stars to produce some amazing star trail images, which also include the earth.
If you are looking for some good night photography dates, be aware that the nights between the August 12th and August 14th will be the best for shooting the Perseids shower.
Tomer Razabi sent us a quick notice that the Perseids shower will reach its peak at the 12th-14th and it should be a delight for photographers who like shooting the night skies.
Photographing a meteor shower is more like photographing a time-lapse than traditional still photos. You can never anticipate where or when a meteor is going to streak across the sky. In order to catch them you have to set up and take as many photos as you can throughout the night with a wide angle lens on the camera. If you leave the camera in the same position you can use the resulting images for a short time-lapse clip in addition to the still images you can capture.
On May 24, 2014 and through Memorial Day weekend, we are about to pass through a brand new comet tail. Not much is known about this meteor shower, but we do know the debris was created by a comet passing through this area of space in the 1800s. The best viewing will be in the Northern Hemisphere (Southern Canada and the continental US). As with all meteor showers it could be a dud or it could be great. The meteors will be radiating from the north in the constellation Camelopardalis and should be visible all night in the northern hemisphere.[Read More…]
With Star Trail photography, like this one, we usually don’t take a single long exposure to achieve a very long open shutter, but rather hundreds of shorter, 30 seconds, exposures.
One of the ways to do this is to use an Intervalometer, and another, more frugal way, is to set the camera on continuous shooting mode and hold the shutter release button. This can be quite painful for your index finger so here is how to make a shutter release from a button.[Read More…]
Over the last few years I was obsessed with macro work. I decided to take a short break and experience/experiment with other forms of photography. I had a short (and enjoyable) period of underwater photography which ended abruptly when I introduced my beloved 60D unprotected to the ocean (not as enjoyable). After that unpleasant experience, I decided to stay away from large water habitats and expand my horizons by driving off to the desert and shooting the night skies (pun totally intended).
In 2006 the Beatles released a new album – Love. It was pretty weird considering John was long dead, but after some googlling I realized that it was a new reworked version of some of the songs made by the band’s original producer, Sir George Martin. It was based on the bands already exiting recordings, demo tracks and bits that never made it to any of their prior albums.
One of the songs (track #22) is an acoustic version of While my guitar gently weeps, written by George Harrison, where Eric Clapton joins the band (AFAIK the only time where anyone ever joined a recording by the Beatles). For me this song is even better than the original track (please no flame wars on this :). If you know the story of Harrison, Clapton and Patti Boyd you know how touching it is to hear those two guitar legends play together.
Back to now, I have 18 versions of this song. It is just one of these songs that everybody loves playing. I love it too. This is why I wanted to create an image for this song based on the immortal line “I look at the world and I notice it’s turning While my guitar gently weeps”.
The general idea was to shoot a Star Trail photograph with a guitar player in the foreground of the frame. This idea has been bouncing in my head till a sketch was entered into my sketch book. Well, it stayed in the book for a while till my exams were over, and then it was time to play.[Read More…]
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