Heading Home

We are finishing up the blur theme at Mortal Muses today, with Muse Mosaic. For this theme, I had gone out to capture some intentional blur one rainy evening, on the street behind my house. I stood in the rain and played for a while, trying different amounts of out-of-focus-ness as the cars went by. I liked the feeling that these images brought to me. I imagined each of these cars were carrying people home, tired and wet after a long day, to a snug, warm house. Interesting how a dark, chilly, rainy image could evoke a warm feeling for me.

You can join in too! Click the button below to hop over and link in your "blur" image and visit the others. Have a great weekend! I'll be heading home myself, from Chicago.

Playing with Night

Since we're exploring Night Photography right now, I had a couple of photos from my recent trip to Venice open to edit. Usually for night photos I do very little editing - cropping and a tiny bit of levels adjustment. I like the light of night as is. Looking at this one though, I started to see some "vintage" opportunities. There is just so much going on here, the store windows, the alleyway, the signs... not to mention the interesting light -- it's very well illuminated for night. I played around with some conversions and really like this one using Pioneer Woman's Heartland action. Couldn't this be from the 60's? With the exception of a couple of modern details, I bet it could. I liked the photo before, I love, love, love it now.

It's so much fun to do this type of play! I hope you are out exploring with your camera this weekend, staying up late and catching the night light. Maybe playing around with some edits, to see what happens. It's all fun! Tomorrow the Night Photography Camera Companion will be sent in my newsletter too - yay! I'm so excited to send this, and I hope it helps you get some great night shots. Keep exploring the night!

PS - If you don't know what a Camera Companion is, you can visit this post or sign up for the newsletter here - you'll get the Basic Composition Camera Companion as a gift for signing up.

Exploring with a Camera: Night Photography (2nd Edition)

[Author's Note: This post finishes up the "Second Edition" Exploring with a Camera posts I've been doing this summer.  In addition to the link up at the end of this post and the sharing in the Flickr pool, for this topic I am creating a special "Night Photography" camera companion that will come in Sunday's email newsletter.  Don't miss it! You can sign up for the newsletter here.]

I discovered night photography about a year ago, in October 2009, on a trip to Florence and Tuscany. I'd taken the odd night photo here and there before this, and some even came out great, but it wasn't until we began traveling in the winter months that year that I really fell in love with it. When you travel in the summer, you have these long days to run around and see everything. By the time the evening comes along, everyone is worn out and you head back to the hotel room as the light fades, especially if you have kids. In the winter, however, the days end early and you find yourself out and about in the darkness, seeing the world in a totally different light. Amazing, beautiful, atmospheric light that is like no other. And just like the quality of light in the daytime, which changes from place to place, the quality of light and atmosphere of places at night changes too. You can see this in the photos I shared as part of my Six Days of Night series last year.  The photo above is one of my first attempts at night photography, in Florence.

My definition of "night photography" covers a broad range of light. As soon as the sun goes down and the lights start coming on, to me that begins the night. This is the time that the flash would start automatically coming on in your camera or you might just put it away, if you are used to using natural light.

Let's look at how light progresses from day to evening. This image of London is from very early evening. You can see that the sky is still quite light, but the phone booth is lit, the streetlights are on and the windows are starting to glow with light. There is still a lot of light at this time for your photos, but you start to get the warm glow that makes night photos something special.

The transition from day to night is called twilight or also the "blue hour" because you see the sky transition through a wonderful range of blue. The contrast of this blue sky with the warm yellow of artificial lights is especially pleasing, as in this photo from early evening in Split, Croatia.

Toward the end of the  "blue hour," the skies are an amazing deep blue, as in the photo below taken the same evening in Split, just later. The blue also changes as you look toward the west, where the sun just went down, versus toward the east. You can see the variation in blue in the sky of this image below, from bottom right to top left. I can't image a prettier blue color! No color adjustments done to this at all.

After a while, you will find yourself in full night, where the background skies are black. This has a completely different feel in the photo, all illumination is from the artifical lights around, as in this photo of Piazza San Marco in Venice.

Guess what? The blue hour happens twice a day, before dawn and after sunset. There is a great website, bluehoursite.com, that gives you the times of the blue hour for anywhere in the world on any day, so you can plan ahead!

Now that we've talked about light, let's talk about how to use it creatively at night. There are so many ways to photograph the night! Looking through my photos last week I came up with lots of ideas. To start off, you know that reflections are one of my favorite things, whether the smooth as glass reflection of my favorite Venice photo (I had to slip this one in!), or the ripples of the bay in Split.

Reflections don't only come from a large body of water at night as I've shown above. The pavement of the sidewalk, streets, rain... at night there are unending sources of light reflections. Not only are they cool to capture, but they increase the light available for taking photographs. Keep your eye out for them! We had a rainy night during our visit to Bath, and the reflections were so interesting. The really highlight the stone walkways and streets.

You might also note how yellow the light looks in the above photo, I did not do any adjustments to white balance to change how it came out in the camera. In my night shots I like the yellow glow of the lights, because that is part of the feel of night for me, although sometimes I do tone it down just a bit. You have to be careful when you adjust white balance on a night shot, because you can make the image look weird. The image below is an example. Left is out of the camera (quite yellow), Center is the color correction I like (still slightly yellow), and Right is over-corrected (no yellow left at all). While the flowers are white in the right one, that adjustment ends up creating an overall blue cast to the photo, and it no longer looks quite like night.

Night is a time for wonderful light bokeh. Since you often need to shoot with a wide open aperture to keep shutter speed down, you can capture the bokeh of lights in the background. This photo of the Chapel Bridge and the Lucerne water front is a good example. Since I've focused close to me, on the bridge, the waterfront behind is out of focus with nice bokeh. I've decided that I don't use this effect enough, I need to play with it more in my night shots.

Watch for light pools or effects. Some of the paned windows in York provided wonderful shapes of light on the ground. I would love to go back and focus some shots just on those!

Night is also a wonderful time for silhouettes. Either from the fading light of twilight, or an artificial light source. The silhouette of the person walking by the bookstore in Padua, in the shot below, gives interest to the colorful background. And the strong light coming out the store front made this easy to get.

Strong light can also create shadows, sometimes in multiple directions at once if there are multiple light sources, like in this photo of my son's legs and feet. Pretty cool! You don't see this in the day, since we only have one sun. :)

Another great thing to capture at night is motion - in the form of blur. Because of the longer exposures you need, moving things will be blurred in your frame if the camera is still. You can also try to capture a moving object as still, with the background blurred to show motion, if you pan along with the moving object. This takes a lot of practice and trial and error. I don't have any great examples of this, although I've tried, but the photo below from Venice shows the idea. I was on a moving boat, trying to get the bridge over the canal still while the rest of the photo was blurred. More practice is obviously needed, but hopefully you get the idea.

Sometimes, when you have just gone beyond the limits of any clear, in focus shot, just play. The photo below is from that same Vaporetto ride in Venice. Since I was moving on the boat, I played around with longer shutter speeds and intentionally moved the camera to get some cool effects. Kind of neat how the background buildings are still clear and "still" while the bright lights are moving - completely unplanned.

And finally, don't be afraid of the dark. This is night, you can have large areas of your photo completely black and still have an amazing photo. Throw away the idea of the the entire frame being exposed when you are shooting at night, and just go for your focal point. It can create a dramatic image, like this one, another all-time favorite of mine from Venice.

My main mode of operation is to handhold my camera for night shots. I just am not willing to haul a tripod around with me all day so that I can have it handy at night, so big and cumbersome. So I've learned quite a bit along with way that I can share with you for optimizing your ability to get good "Handheld" night shots. (By the way, these will work in any low light situation, such as indoors, not just as night.)  The tips below will be incorporated into the Night Photography camera companion that will be sent on Sunday to newsletter subscribers, so you can have them in your camera bag wherever you go!

Tips for "Handheld" night shots:

1. First off, turn off your flash! Turn your camera to a mode that won't allow the flash to come on.
2. Camera shake is your biggest enemy here - just the movement of you holding the camera while the shutter is open. A rule of thumb to avoid camera shake is that the shutter speed should be no slower than 1/[Your zoom setting]. So if you are at 50mm zoom, your shutter speed shouldn't go below 1/50. At 35mm, shutter speed of 1/30.
3. Increase your stability by taking a wide stance with your feet, tucking your elbows tight into your sides, and hold your breath while you take the shot. I can sometimes get good shots down to 1/20 or 1/15 with this method. You can also lean against a pole or the side of a building for increased stability.
4. You can also increase your stability with an "assisted handhold" - use anything stable around, like a railing or bench or fence, and use that to help hold your camera. I put my hand under the lens, spreading my fingers and moving them around, to support the camera with the right angle. I also have to plan for more straightening and cropping in these shots, because you don't have as much control. Most of my Venice canal shots were done with the assitance of a bridge railing for stability. Another option that is less cumbersome than a tripod but provides more stability is a monopod.
5. Set your camera on Aperture Priority, with the setting as wide open as it will go. This will help keep your shutter speeds as fast as possible.
6. Or, set your camera on Shutter Priority, to a reasonable shutter speed. I often do this to set it at 1/50 when we are just walking around a town. I've found that this setting works consistently well for avoiding camera shake on the go, and it forces the camera to choose the best aperture for the exposure. This works when my camera is choosing slower shutter speeds but not using the full aperture range of my lens.
7. My last resort is to bump up my ISO setting. This is one of the most wonderful things about digital, that we can adjust our ISO setting, instead of being stuck with whatever is set for the film that is loaded. When you're wide open on aperture and your shutter speed is still too low, then increase the ISO setting. I kind of think of ISO increase as a last resort, because with every increase to ISO you also increase the noise. I purchased my current camera (Canon Rebel T1i) partially because of the increased ISO range, 3200 and beyond, but the more I've gotten into night photography the more I realize that I would rather not use the ISO settings higher than 800 if I can avoid it. But - when faced with either not getting the shot or having a noisier shot - I'll always choose to get the shot, even with the noise.
8. If all else fails, underexpose. By underexposing, you can drive your camera to shorter shutter speeds. As long as you don't underexpose so much that you lose the vital pixel information of your focal point, you can compensate exposure in the computer using software.  I've learned that I can easily underexpose 2/3 to 1 full stop on night photos and recover them in post processing.
9. Constantly check your settings, especially shutter speed, if your camera is in an auto mode for exposure. You have to be aware of them as you shoot at night, even more so than you might normally, because the lighting conditions change so much from place to place.
10. Always take multiple shots, because with several you might get one that one perfect one. There is a lot more room for error with night photography. And happy accidents too! Review in camera using the zoom feature, because sometimes a shot might look perfect on your tiny screen only to have some camera shake when you view it larger on your computer.
11. Finally, if you just reach the limits of your equipment and don't want to go the tripod route, there is nothing that can help your handheld night photography more than upgrading your equipment for a lens with a wide aperture. Night photography is one area where your equipment really does come into play a bit more, so you will have to experiment and find the limits of your camera/lens combo.When night comes, I switch to my 35mm f/1.4 lens. This has given me an extended range of light I can work with at night. Consider trying out a 50mm f/1.8 lens as an inexpensive first step into this arena, if you have a dSLR. And if you have a point-and-shoot, well... you might want to think about a dSLR or use a tripod.

As I've progressed further with night photography, and especially after my photo lesson in Paris, I can see the benefit of the tripod. You can decrease your ISO and increase your shutter speeds significantly and take your camera limitations mostly out of the equation. The cost of it is carrying the tripod, so for me, I see this as an option when I am intentionally traveling to photograph rather than when I photograph as I travel (the latter is my normal mode of operation).

Tips for "Tripod" shots:

1. You need a good stable tripod that will not move with normal winds and can hold your camera. My 24-70mm lens is a big one and so most of those little, compact tripods you can buy won't work for my camera. Also recommended with a tripod are a quick release feature (where you don't actually screw the camera into the tripod, but into a piece that you can easily connect and disconnect from the tripod) and a level that can help you keep your camera straight (something I need!). There are multiple types of adjustments available, but you want to make sure that you can do both horizontal and vertical orientation easily. There are so many types of tripods out there, if you can visit a store and try them out with your camera before you buy, that is recommended. I have a simple tripod that is strong enough to hold my camera stably, has quick release, but is as light as I could manage.
2. Ensure flash is off.
3. Set your ISO lower, to reduce noise. Try as low as the camera will allow you to set it, and work up from there as needed.
4. You have more flexibility in your aperture and shutter speed settings, so play around here. You might still want to set your aperture wide open, to reduce the shutter speed, just to avoid really long exposures you will need for a low ISO setting. You are still subject to camera shake with a tripod, just less so. The longer the shutter is open, the more likely you are to have an issue.
5. Use a remote shutter release. You can still shake the camera on a tripod just by pressing the shutter. Remote shutter releases (cable or wireless) are available inexpensively for many cameras. This removes you completely as the source of the camera shake.
6. Use your camera self timer. Another option, if you don't have a remote shutter release, is to use the self timer feature that most cameras have these days. This doesn't work so well, however, if you are trying to time the shot with movement in or out of the frame. For example, in many of my Paris shots, I had to be ready to shoot as soon as my frame was clear of people. If I used the self timer, I could never have been able to hit the shutter such that 10 seconds later the frame was clear.
7. Again, review, check your settings and take multiple shots. Once you get everything set up perfectly, you don't want to be disappointed if you discover on the computer that it was slightly out of focus. It's hard to use manual focus at night, so I use auto focus as much as possible but that isn't always fool proof either.

[2011 Update: After using my tripod several times on photo excursions since this original post, I find I don't enjoy photography using my tripod very much. In some way it disconnects me from my subject, and while I can get technically great images, I don't love these images or the process of capturing them as much as I do when the camera is in my hand. For that reason, I mainly do handheld night photography. The lead in shot is a handheld image from Venice taken in June.] 

If you stuck with me here to the end you must be ready to start exploring night photography! Be sure to sign up for the newsletter to receive your portable camera companion on Night Photography this Sunday. You can link your recent or archive images in below, and put them in the Flickr pool for the opportunity to have me feature them here on the blog. I can't wait to see your view!



FYI - Links will be moderated. Please use a permalink, ensure that your linked image is on topic, and include a link back to this site in your post through the Exploring with a Camera button (available here) or a text link. Thanks!

Welcome Home

This light says to me, "Welcome home." It doesn't matter that I wasn't actually staying at this hotel in Inverness, Scotland, I still found myself welcomed by the warm light shining out into the evening. This is a favorite time of day for photographs for me, with the contrast of cool blue outdoor light and warm yellow indoor light. It always makes me feel like there is a warm, safe place to go.

Yesterday I was on Mortal Muses, with a companion "square format" version of this same door, asking the question, "What light welcomes you home?"

I would love to hear your answer today.

Waiting

The night is so quiet and still, you almost have to hold your breath for fear of making a ripple in the water and ruining the scene. The lone gondolier on duty rests silently in his craft. He has nothing to do, other than wait for customers to appear for a midnight gondola ride. His daydreams and night dreams drift off into infinity like the reflections in the water. Just waiting. Someone will come.

Guess what? The creative space I was feeling yesterday was perfect. A friend asked me for some design help, and I happen to have this creative time free. I love how things work out. Now I have a fun new project, something completely different to do for a little while. I can help her out before getting back to my own ideas, and will be refreshed for the change of activity.

I was just waiting, like the gondolier, and the right thing appeared...

Do you find yourself waiting? Do you take the time to pause and breathe, and see what comes along?

London Bound

We head out today for a weekend trip to London, to visit my wonderful muse friend Kirstin and hopefully meet some of you at our photowalk on Sunday.

It's so amazing to me, to find I now have friends all over the world because of my blog. I hope that I get to meet some of you on my future travels!  Drop me a note via email if you are in any of these places we'll be visiting in the next few months, I would love to meet up:
Sicily, Italy
Santorini and Athens, Greece
Prague
Oslo, Norway
If you are anywhere around northern Italy, let me know too. A day trip is always fantastic!

Have a great weekend, and don't forget to capture some fog with your camera if it shows up near you.

Exploring with a Camera: Fog

Winter brings fog, one of the most wonderful weather patterns for photography. I know I've said it before here on the blog, but I love fog!  Because you can only see what is right in front of you, there is a delicious sense of mystery, of things slowly revealed.

Fog forms when there is high humidity along with a temperature that is very close to the dew point, it is essentially a low lying clound. You can read more about the science of fog here. It will form readily near bodies of water, like lakes and rivers, and in cooler temperatures. That's why you often find fog early in the morning, dissipating as the weather warms up.

I've had the good luck to live two places now where fog is common: Oregon and northern Italy. It forms frequently here at my house in Italy, since we are right near the large Parco di Monza through which the Lambro River runs. A large, natural open space is a great source of fog - temperatures are always cooler in the park and the moisture is abundant from the landscape.

How can you use fog as an element in your photography? Here are a few ideas...

Fog provides a great backdrop, to capture a single element. A distracting background can be completely hidden in the fog. I use this feature to capture silhouettes, like the lead-in image of the post and this image below. The detail is highlighted by the blank backdrop. I also converted both of these to black and white, to heighten the contrast. One thing to be careful of with fog is underexposure, because the light white background will dominate your camera's meter readings. Play around with overexposing your images just a little bit to compensate.

As you move closer to a object, fog slowly reveals. Vary your distance to a subject to create a different effect and feel in your images. The two images below are of the same tree on the same day, but taken at different distances. The first one,  farther away from the camera, creates that sense of mystery I was talking about earlier.

For both of these images, I again converted to black and white to heighten the contrast. Fog desaturates colors and your images can look almost black and white straight out of the camera, but converting to black and white can keep the focus on the shapes and tones rather than what little color remains.

You can use fog to get a sense of depth in your photo. While photographers often manipulate the depth of field through aperture, you can also create depth using the atmosphere. Fog creates depth by successively lightening the objects in the background as you move away from the foreground. You can see this effect in the image of the trees below.

Light fog can give a subtle effect, as in the next example. Along with placement, focus and color, the sense of the largest tree as the focal point is enhanced by the fading trees behind.

Heavy fog can make depth obvious, even at short distances. This image of a tree shows the effect of a heavy fog, the back of the tree already fading significantly compared to the front.

All of these examples so far are from farther away, what happens when you get up close? You can see condensation on the surfaces. Get in close to see what I call "beads of fog" on the smaller objects around you.

I've talked about what is revealed as you move through the fog, but also consider what is revealed as the fog is lifting. This image, taken looking up through the fog, shows the blue sky peeking through as the fog is burned away by the sun.

In this image, you can see how interesting it can be to capture the sun through the fog. This was an unusual day, because the fog seemed to be disappearing from the bottom up rather than the top down.

Finally, don't forget about capturing the world in fog at night. You know I love night! Fog seems to amplify the artificial lights of night, creating a warm glow that is unlike any other night effect. I did no color or exposure correction on these, I liked them as they came out of the camera.

I know many of us are anxiously awaiting summer for the warmth and light of the sun. Instead of focusing on what you don't have right now, take a moment to celebrate fog, one of the delightful gifts of winter.

Today I am going to try something different! As a welcome to the participants in the Scavenger Hunt from Ashley Sisk's Ramblings and Photos, I'm going to open the linky today and keep it open for two weeks. (If you are in a blog reader, come over to the blog to see the link tool.) I'll still post the linky next Thursday for Share Your View as usual, if you want some time to capture the fog or look through your archive.

In addition, I'm going to give away a set of my Black and White postcards by random drawing to one person who links in a fog photo. I haven't given away a set of these yet on my blog, and since this set includes the foggy tree image it is the perfect time to give these away.

Thanks for sticking with me! Good luck with your fog photos, I look forward to seeing what you capture. You can find the code to copy and paste the Exploring with a Camera button on your blog here.

A Room with a View

Our hotel in Madrid was in a wonderful location, right on Gran Via and a block from the Callao subway stop. Not only was the location great, but we had a wonderful view. We were right on the corner of the building with a wraparound balcony. How cool is that? I loved being able to capture this bustling street at night, from above. Car lights, holiday lights, store lights. Night is when this town comes alive. The streets are crowded, the stores are open late, and the restaurants are hopping. Restaurants don't even open until 8:30pm for dinner. And we thought things started late in Italy!

Staying up late is not my normal mode of operation, although I've stretched from turning into a pumpkin at 10pm to around midnight since we've moved to Italy. My work schedule, and the culture, required a shift. It's been good for me, seeing more of the world at night. I would have completely missed out on the energy and light at night without this experience. I'm so grateful!

Lessons from Abroad: Join the Blogsphere

Lessons from Abroad: Join the Blogosphere

[This is the last part of a five part series. See the previous parts here: one, two, three, four.]

Wow! We’re down to the last of my five lessons from abroad, to help you find your passion and purpose. The final lesson I want to share is: Join the Blogosphere.

My blog and participation in the blogosphere has been a key part of my personal journey to discover my passion and purpose, in ways that I could have never imagined when I began it in 2008. I want to talk about the two parts of joining the blogosphere that have really helped me, and show you how they can help you also find your direction.

The first part of joining the blogosphere is writing your own personal blog. This can seem daunting for a number of reasons. You are putting yourself out there in a public way - other people can read and comment on your ideas – that can be scary. You may be worried no one will want to read it. You may be overwhelmed with the idea of having something to say or share on a regular basis. You may be confused by all of the technology options, what you think you need to know technically in order to have a blog.

There are a lot of reasons to be fearful of starting a blog – but one very good reason to do it: There is no better way to get aligned with your true passion. The only way to sustain a blog long term is to write about something that you are passionate about, this is an important truth of blogging. If you are not passionate about what you write, it will not feed your soul. You may maintain it for a while but you will eventually then lose interest, drop out.

It may take a while to find your voice and topic for your blog, you might start and stop several times in writing your blog, even start and stop several different blogs. That is entirely normal, if you read the stories of long term bloggers. Finding your voice takes experimentation. You may try on different topics randomly, and have no single direction. But in the experimentation and the seemingly random blog posts, a theme may begin to emerge. You start line of conversation that you sustain for a long period of time. When this happens, it becomes easy, quite pleasurable even, to write regularly. Guess what – you are tapped into your true self, and your passion is starting to emerge. Go with it, wherever it leads.

I started my blog when I applied for this job that brought me to Italy. I thought it would be a good way to keep family and friends back home updated on what was going on, if I got the job. After moving, I found that I wasn’t able to sustain that kind of “update” blogging – I just wasn’t that interested in writing about our daily lives. After a friend pestered me to update my blog, I decided to start posting something I was interested in – a photo every day from our European travels. I would pick a favorite and then write a few words of description along with it. With that, I struck gold. As I selected the photos and wrote about them, I started to learn more about my art form and my creative process. I started to notice and write about what creativity and photography brought me at a deeper level. I started to recognize my passion, through the writing I was doing on my blog. The passion that I now realize was already there, just waiting to be noticed.

There are as many different ideas of what blogs are or are not about as there are bloggers. You will find a whole range of types of blogs on the internet. Here’s my definition, now that I’m established and looking back, and this might be a place to start if you want to begin a blog as a tool to help you find your passion.

My blog is…
A place to explore topics that interest me
A place to share my art and what it means to me
A place to share my experiences and what the personal insights I gain from them
A public place, where anyone (even my son or my boss) might read it
A place to positively connect with other people on the internet
Written from a place of honesty and heart

My blog is not…
A personal journal of all of my unfiltered emotions
A record of events
A place to vent or talk negatively
Written for show or to meet other’s expectations

If you don’t have a blog yet, there are many free options available to try it out. You can be unlisted or anonymous or use a pseudonym if you’re worried about the “public” aspects of it. The important thing is to write honestly, consistently, and about what interests you. Keep following the trail of what you seem to want to write about - your passion lies at the end of that trail.

The second way the blogosphere helps to find your passion and purpose is through participation. The blogosphere is not a one way conversation, where you put yourself out there in a vacuum. It may start out that way, but to truly expand the experience, it should be a two way conversation. Once you are consistently writing on your blog, beginning to find your voice and style and topic, it’s good to reach out to others who may have similar interests.

There are so many blogs and websites out there, it seems overwhelming at first. When you start to narrow down your focus and interest though, you start to see that there are smaller communities within the giant internet community. You might start with a keyword search, and see what you find on your area of interest. From there, you start reading the blogs you find. These might lead you to other blogs or articles, resources you didn’t ever realize existed. Once you get brave and leave a comment on someone else’s blog, you might find that you get a comment or reply back. You start to build a community, through your interactions. You find new resources, you expand your network.

Why would you want to do that? It might seem silly, to look to expand your network or build a community if you are just trying to find your personal passion. But each interaction you have, makes you think. You further define and refine your thoughts as you read ideas and have a conversation with others in the blogosphere. The others you run into have thoughts or experiences or insights that are valuable to you as you progress on your journey. What someone else writes may completely resonate or make clear an idea you are struggling with, or vice versa.

My experience with participation in the blogosphere has been extremely positive and crucial to my discovery of passion and purpose. There have been multiple times that a comment on something I wrote on my blog came along at exactly the right time to help me understand myself in a different way. I’ve had others tell me the same of comments I’ve left them, or blog posts I’ve written. In my exploration of the virtual world, I’ve found other like-minded individuals and true friendships that cross all of the borders and boundaries that exist in the real world. As I’ve started to participate, I’ve followed trails to new people and sites and resources that have, over time, let me toward my passion and purpose.

Would I have started the blog if I didn’t move to Italy? Probably not. I didn’t “get” blogging before, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on the computer because that felt like “work.”That was before I recognized the real connections – both to my true self and to others – that joining the blogosphere can bring.

My Passion and Purpose

With all of these lessons on how to find your passion and purpose, are you still wondering what mine are?

My passion is photography as an art form and an expression of my self. I have a personal mantra that I created some time ago, through writing on my blog:

I am an artist, my medium is photography, and I have a unique vision to show the world.

This statement is continually being refined as I change and grow, but that’s my passion at the core.

My purpose right now is to help others to see that they too have a unique vision to show the world, through whatever their art or passion is. We all have creativity inside of us, but we spend too much of our time comparing and limiting ourselves, or focusing on just living in the established routine.

I’ve started down this journey of fulfilling my purpose by creating my first ever e-course: Find Your Eye: A photo course with heart and soul. It starts January 9 (that's in two days!) and runs 6 weeks (registration is open now at wishstudio.com). The course is designed to help photographers at any level start to develop, recognize and appreciate their personal style; the unique point of view that only they can share with the world in their photography.

All this clarity came through the personal practice of the Lessons from Abroad I’ve shared with you. Pretty cool, huh?



(Photo is from Venice, Italy)

Time Travel

Someone once told me that human beings are the only animals that time travel. We move forward and backward in time unceasingly in our heads. Dwelling on the past or dreaming of the future, we barely glimpse the present moment.

This time of year is big for time travel. Reviewing our accomplishments of 2010, we are astonished that another year has passed. We look to 2011 as if it is something shiny and new, a package waiting to be unwrapped. Really, 2011 will be another collection of moments, strung together in time, just like 2010 has been. There is nothing special about these days at the end of one year and the beginning of the next, they are only numbers on paper. A way to mark time.

Where have you been time traveling these last few days? What have you seen in your past and your future? I hope for today you spend some time celebrating the present moment. Because that's all we really have, when you get down to it. Our ability to time travel is just an illusion.

Today's 9 Muses Musing prompt is CELEBRATE. Tomorrow's prompt wraps up 9 Muses Musing with RESOLUTION. See you then!

Photographic PS - The "time travel" image above was created by setting my camera to a 1 second exposure, and then zooming from max to min focal length during the exposure. You can see it was handheld because of the wiggly lines, if I had been using a tripod they would be straight. I got this idea from my friend Barbara's post on lights, but when experimenting I found I really liked the effect with people. Below is a normal shot of the same place, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan. Which do you like better?

Snowflake Math

Snowflake + snowflake + snowflake + .... + snowflake = SNOW.

Today's 9 Muses Musing prompt is SNOWFLAKE, but I've been sick and in bed the last couple of days, and have not come up with a snowflake photo. So I'm trying to make one of my favorites from our little trip into Monza last weekend work for this prompt. What do you think? Are you buying it?

I loved this photo because it shows how bicycles are just a part of life here. A mode of transportation, regardless of the weather. I was a bike commuter back in Oregon, but I have to admit I would not ride in snow. I think many people have that opinion here too, but look - there were enough bikes to fill up a bike rack on a Saturday night in Monza. Only one of them had snow on the seat, and the tire tracks indicate most of these had been used recently.

Impressive. It should inspire me, but I still don't think I want to ride in the snow.

Tomorrow's 9 Muses Musing prompt is STOCKING. I'd better get creative...

Exploring with a Camera: Holiday Lights

I love this time of year. The nights are long, but they are full of beautiful, bright holiday lights! It makes this month, where you often go to work and come home in the dark, so much more enjoyable. This time, for Exploring with a Camera, we are going to look at different ways to capture these wonderful holiday lights.

City Lights


Here in Italy, every little town has their own holiday lights twinkling above streets and walkways. The central shopping zones are a festive place to visit and photograph.  Via Dante in Milan is one of the main thoroughfares, and the lights are beautiful. The lead-in photo above portrays the calm and quiet after the shops and restaurants are closed on a cold winter's night, with most people tucked into their warm houses. The photo below, of a street in Turin city center, is the opposite. I love the energy and movement conveyed in the photo, you can tell it's a bustling place, and the lights only add to the mood - you know it's a festive time of year.

Most towns will have a big Christmas tree in a central location, which can be fun to capture.Try getting back and capturing a scene, to show the tree in the context of location. The tree below in Milan's Piazza del Duomo would be just another big tree with white lights, but with the Duomo behind, it becomes more interesting and impressive.

Don't forget to capture the buildings and monuments around, with their pretty dressing for the season. This is Milan's castle, Castello Sforzesco, which even has a Disney-esque light show to music to show off it's millions of tiny lights.

Brush up on your night photography tips from the past Exploring with a Camera post and head out into your town to capture the lights of the season.

Light Bokeh


Holiday lights are a classic time to capture light bokeh! You get bokeh when you have: A shallow depth of field (from a wide open aperture or low f-number), a subject or focal distance that is close and distant point light sources.  This year I played around with capturing bokeh for this Murano glass ornament photo below. Let me tell you, this was harder than it looks!

A few tips, after my experience with capturing this photo:

1. You can't have the ambient light too bright, because it washes out the lights behind and you want that light bokeh! I turned off the room lights and moved a reading light, which was much dimmer, to point at the ornament to get enough light to illuminate it without washing out the lights on the tree behind.

2. While a wider open aperture will give bigger and rounder circles of light bokeh (you can see the flat sides on the bokeh in my photo), it also didn't allow for enough of the ornament to be in focus to be appealing. I had to experiment with different settings and found f/2.0 was about the best compromise to have most of the ornament in focus and nice light bokeh, for this photo.

3. You will probably need a tripod or your camera on a steady surface for this work. Even with a wide open aperture and bumping up the ISO somewhat (I didn't want to go above 800), the light was really low and the shutter speeds were much to long to hand hold without camera shake. I could have bumped up the ISO more and handheld, but I was at home and had the tripod available, so I figured why not use it.

4. Play around with the distance of your subject from the lights. Too far and the lights are just tiny dots, if you can even see them. Too close, and you don't get much of the "bokeh" effect. Also, varying the distance of your camera too the subject can change things. It takes some playing around, I discovered!

Here's another ornament photo with some light bokeh on the tree. You can see that not all of the lights are bokeh circles, because they are in the same focal plane as the ornament. They need to be out of the focal plane, to get the bokeh. This one was handheld. In fact, do you see me reflected in the ornament?

If you are using a point and shoot camera without manual control of aperture, try setting the camera to "Portrait" or "Macro" mode and turning the flash off. The camera will then choose the lowest f-number it can to blur the background, which is how you'll be able to get some light bokeh.

 Twinkle Lights

Another fun thing to try when you are capturing holiday lights is making them "twinkle" - you know, when the lights look like little stars?  This is done by the opposite aperture setting - closed down aperture or a high f-number. You will definitely need a tripod for this work, because as you close down the aperture you limit the amount of light that gets into the camera, and you have to compensate with longer shutter speeds than are possible to hand hold. 

Here is a picture of the tree in our home in Oregon, several years ago, using this technique. The aperture was set at f/22 with a shutter speed of 1.6 seconds. You can't hand hold that! My son was sitting really still for this photo, by the way. Click on the photo to see it larger, if you can't see the twinkle at this size.

Here's another, of some the gifts under the tree, with the same settings. I also adjusted the color cast on these two photos in Photoshop Elements, out of the camera they had the usual yellow tone of incandescent lights.

With a point and shoot, use the "landscape" setting, which should set the aperture to the highest possible f-number for the camera, and turn the flash off.

Reflections and Shadows

Where there is light, there are usually shadows too. As we set up our holiday decorations this year, I noticed that the candle we had near this little wooden tree was casting a very cool shadow. I played around with different angles, moving both the candle and the tree as well as the changing my composition with the camera. This one was my favorite, and I ran the Pioneer Woman "Seventies" Action on it to give a vintage feel.

In this photo, another older one from our home in Oregon, I liked the reflection of light on the blinds, it created interesting lines.

Trees and lights are often placed by windows, which give wonderful light reflections at night, and create a nice compositional effect. Do you see the "light echoes" in this photo, above the window and tree? Those were not there in reality and have been annoying to me at times as I worked on night photography. I recently learned these were coming from the filter on my lens. Remove the filter if you find you are getting these, and you will likely eliminate them. 

Are you ready to capture the holiday lights now? I am! I want to capture as many as I can, in my last holiday season in Italy. I hope you will return next Thursday, to Share Your View and link in with your holiday lights photos. You have a week to review your archive or take some new pictures to share with us all, plenty of time!

By the way, did you notice the new Exploring with a Camera blog button on the sidebar? You can get the code on the Exploring with a Camera page, if you want to put one on your blog too. 

Thank you for exploring with me!