Monthly Archives: February 2020

Day 14 Assignment: The Twilight Shot

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For this assignment we were required to take photos in one location from sunset to full darkness so that we could experience the changing light and the adjustments we needed to make to our settings.

I found this chart when I was checking the time of sunset on the day. It shows the times of Civil, Nautical and Astro Twilight.

I started shooting at 7.12 pm and took about 35 photos until 7.47 pm when it became impossible for my camera to capture any image, regardless of what settings I chose.

7.12 pm 1/160 f6.4 ISO 400

Within five minutes I had to widen the aperture and Increase the ISO:

7.17 pm 1/130 f6.3 ISO 800

From 7.18 pm I had to use the widest aperture on my camera f5.6

7.18 pm 1/320 f5.6 ISO 800

At 7.19 pm I increased the ISO to 1600 but that made the image too bright and washed out the colours.

7.19 pm 1/320 f5.6 ISO 1600

I tried including some foreground after that and adjusted the shutter speed and ISO settings to try to get a true representation of the colours – f5.6 aperture being the widest on my camera used for all.

7.27 pm 1/100 f5.6 ISO 1600

From then until the end of Civil Twilight at 7.34 pm I turned the ISO up to 800 and adjusted the shutter speed to between 1/30 and 1/100.

7.34 pm 1/30 f5.6 ISO 800

After that, while I was shooting in Nautical Twilight, I increased the ISO to 3200 and adjusted the shutter speed to between 1/25 and 1/160

7.47 pm 1/25 f5.6 ISO 3200

My camera didn’t make it to the end of Nautical Twilight, which is probably just as well as it was past dinner time and we were hungry!

31 Days to Becoming a Better Photographer

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I’ve been doing an online photography course for a couple of weeks now, ’31 Days to Becoming a Better Photographer’, which requires posting photos to a Facebook group.

1/320 f6.4 ISO 200 Off Nightcliff Beach

I’m trying to work out how to do this from WordPress.

I would like to post my photos and assignments here so people can view them if they are interested instead of on Facebook where they don’t have any option.

Day 13: Find the Best Location

Virtual Scouting

I used Google Maps to locate Nightcliff Jetty, my favourite place to take photos. I had a look at some of the photos other people had posted on there. It’s a very popular spot and it looks like it has been photographed from every possible angle already. I’ll have to get creative!

This assignment proved very useful in planning our upcoming trip to Hawaii. When I Googled ‘Hawaii photography guides’ it came up with three sites detailing the best locations for classic shots from painted forests and snow-capped mountains to volcanoes and lava flowing into the sea.

Flickr World Map was also full of amazing shots.

A search of my local libraries found a recent edition of Lonely Planet’s Best of Hawaii which is full of amazing photos a well as being a great source of information.

I can hardly wait to make my own attempts!