Kat Eye Studio

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Exploring with a Camera: The Lights of Night

Welcome to December’s Exploring with a Camera! This month we’re going to be exploring the Lights of Night. It’s the perfect time of year to get out and play around with some night photography, since there are such short hours of daylight here in the northern hemisphere and all of these extra holiday lights hanging around.

I’m going to do something a little different this month. Instead of having a whole new Exploring with a Camera topic, let’s refresh on a few oldies but goodies on the photography of night and lights. Be sure to read all the way to the end because I’ve got an extra-special bonus that I want to be sure you don’t miss!

December’s Fog, Benton County Courthouse in Corvallis, Oregon

Night Photography

Tony’s Studio, San Francisco, California

You can revisit Exploring with a Camera: Night Photography to take a look at the basics of night photography. In this article, you will find tips on everything from the blue hour, reflections, and color cast, to handholding your camera for good night shots without a tripod. It’s based on all of my “lessons learned” from wandering at night on our travels around Europe, where I discovered the fun and beauty of a city after dark. These tips are timeless… The techniques I share on getting good night/low light images while hand-holding the camera in this post are ones I still use today.

Holiday Lights

Tree Lights, Albany, Oregon

In Exploring with a Camera: Holiday Lights, I focused in on the specifics of capturing those holiday lights. Revisit this post to get some ideas and tips on capturing city lights, bokeh lights, and twinkle lights. I also take a look at capturing lights in a different way with reflections and shadows, and address the awful “ghost lights” you might sometimes find in your images upon review.

Creative Lights

Exploring with a Camera: Creative Lights will give you a few ideas beyond the basics! Visit this article to learn about layering in and out of focus lights for an interesting view, using zoom to create cool effects, and capturing the funky hologram effect I’ve shown above. These ideas lead you to more abstract creations with the lights of night.

An Added Bonus

I’ve got an added bonus for you too! In my next email newsletter, which should arrive in your inbox on Sunday, I’ll have a PDF with even more tips on night photography. One of the photographers in our local PhotoArts Guild, John Ritchie, is an accomplished night photographer. Take a look at this gallery to see his night photography work.

Last year, John combined his lessons learned on night photography with a tripod and my tips on handheld night photography to create a tip sheet for our guild. He’s graciously allowed me to share it with you all. It’s a fabulous resource! It will arrive with the next Kat Eye News so be sure that you are signed up.

Are you ready to get started? I am! I’m planning to go out in the early hours of the morning this weekend and capture the lights of night. I’ve just purchased a cable release this week and I’m ready to carry my tripod around to play with some new techniques I’ve learned from John.

You can share your explorations with us here through the end of December. Go through your archive, or go out and try something new. Share your city lights, home lights, indoors or out. It doesn’t have to be holiday-related, anything goes as long as it’s the Lights of Night!


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Loving those Lights

Today we finish up Exploring with a Camera: Creative Lights. I hope you’ve enjoyed some new methods of exploring holiday lights. It seems the zoom technique has been quite popular and somewhat addictive. I completely understand! It’s hard to stop once you get started. Each image comes out so different.

I’ve been surprised that I haven’t seen anyone try the Layered Lights yet, this is one of my favorite creative light techniques. I leave you with one more layered lights image from last Christmas in Madrid, a reminder of how much I love the lights of the holiday season.

You can still link in today if you have Creative Light images, let’s see what you’ve been playing around with. Because of the holidays, the next Exploring with a Camera won’t be until mid-January. See you then!



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Exploring with a Camera: Creative Lights

Holiday time = long, dark nights + lots of lights, at least in the northern hemisphere. It’s the perfect time to explore! We’re continuing the recent “lights” theme of Exploring with a Camera with Creative Lights. I’m hoping that at least one, if not all, of these creative techniques will be new to you and will keep you exploring the lights at night for the remainder of the holiday season.

Let’s jump right in!

Layered Lights

Take a look at the lead in photograph, it’s a little bit unusual. It’s a composite of two images, one in-focus and one out-of-focus, creating a neat effect I am calling “Layered Lights.” I discovered this technique on my own last year, when I was looking for new ways to capture the lights in Monza. Seeing the out-of-focus and in-focus images side by side on the computer, I wondered what it would look like to combine them. Layered Lights was the result!

You will need a photo editing software that allows you to blend layers to do this, I use Photoshop Elements (PSE). I’ll show you how to created Layered Lights using this example image from Madrid, Spain. I think it looks great when you have a bit of architecture and lights, since the architecture grounds the image in a dreamy version of reality.

First, open the out-of-focus photo. That becomes your base image. Here’s the out of focus photo I used:

Next, open the in-focus photo and pull it into a layer above the out of focus photo. Here’s my in focus photo:

Now, play with blending modes and opacity of the top layer. Soft light and Overlay blending modes work particularly well. Unless you used a tripod when you captured the images, you may also have to transform (rotate, enlarge, reduce) your in-focus image to overlay the lights and the other elements in the correct locations on the out-of-focus image. It takes a bit of playing around, and I’ve discovered I like the in-focus photo slightly offset from the out-of-focus photo for a dreamier effect.

In the case of this photo example, the out-of-focus lights were also too bright – I couldn’t easily see the in-focus lights when I blended the layers, so I reduce the opacity of the out-of-focus layer and added a 50% grey layer underneath to get the final image:

Here’s what the layers look like in PSE:

Here’s a second example, of a really tall Christmas tree in the Madrid pedestrian zone, and the resulting layers in PSE:

Fun, huh? There are so many different ways you can play with this type of image blending… add more photos or layers, change the underlying layer, change the processing with other effects. Endless possibilities! If you don’t have your own images to try this with, feel free to download the out-of-focus and in-focus images I’ve shared above (right click and then “Save as…”) to play around with this technique. Just be sure to give photo credit and link back here if you share anywhere!

Zoom Lights

Can you tell what this is?

It looks like some really cool fireworks, or I had one friend tell me it looked like something out of the movie Tron. 🙂 This was captured by zooming (changing my focal distance) during a long exposure. Here are the actual lights I photographed:

To get this effect, you will need a zoom on your camera and the ability to set a long shutter speed. I found a shutter speed of 1 second worked very well. Set up your shot by starting zoomed in, fitting the lights just inside the frame. As you press the shutter, start zooming out (making the lights smaller) and keep the zoom moving through the exposure. The more you move the zoom during the exposure, the longer the lines of light will be. If you are shooting handheld, you will see some wiggle in the lines of lights. With practice and steadiness, you can minimize the wiggle or you can always use a tripod to get absolutely straight lines.

One tip to keep obvious “joggles” at the start or end of the lines, start your zooming motion just before you press the shutter and keep it going smoothly until after the shutter closes.

Have fun experimenting! As I’ve shared before, I find it especially interesting to capture people, I think it gives a cool time travel effect.

Hologram Lights

A couple of years ago we won a prize for the “worst white elephant gift” at a holiday party. The prize was well worth it, it was two pairs of these cool holiday hologram glasses, modeled here by my son.

What’s so cool about these? They change any point light source into a holographic image when you look through them. OR, when you photograph through them! The glasses shown in this example are the “Christmas Star” version, and here’s what our tree looks like, when photographed through the film of the glasses:

I love it! Someone could probably tell me how to do this with post processing, but all I did was hold the film of glasses right up to the lens, and shoot. So simple! You have to move the glasses around a little bit to get the best coverage of the lens since the opening in the glasses is smaller than the lens, but the paper around the edges gives a nice vignetting effect. If you are shooting up closer, I’ve found you need to focus on the lights to get the hologram effect, as I did here:

If you focus on another object, as I did with this ornament, the lights become blurry and you lose the hologram effect.

This doesn’t only work for Christmas lights, it will work for any point light source. Car headlights, streetlights, etc. become point light sources when viewed from far enough away. Lots of exploration fun! A quick google search for “Holographic Christmas Glasses” yielded a number of options. Here’s a link to a set of glasses with different hologram images on Amazon. I think I may have to get the set myself to play around some more, since they are so inexpensive and so very fun.

Also consider other films you can photograph through, for interesting effects. I can imagine that the thin, colored cellophane that gift baskets come in would give cool effects too!

So, what do you think, are you ready to go exploring Creative Lights? I’m excited already to see what you link in. I love how I can throw this information out there and get even more creative interpretations coming back from all of you. You can link in below or share in the Flickr pool. Happy light hunting!



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 on the sidebar here) or a text link. Thanks!

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Magical Lights

I must admit, as we’ve gone through Exploring with a Camera: Holiday Lights, I’ve found myself desparately missing Italy and Europe. This has been the hardest period since we’ve moved home from Italy in July, and it’s caught me by surprise.

You see, holiday time is magical in Europe. The city centers come alive with light displays, like this one on Via Dante in Milan last year. Remember my lead-in photo in the Holiday Lights post? It was from the same street, a year earlier. I find myself wondering what the lights look like this year.

And the markets, oh, the holiday markets! Every town, small or large, has a holiday market with interesting goods and special foods to sell. They are always hustling, bustling places in the pedestrian zones. Regardless of the weather, the vendors and the shoppers can be found there.

Each city has their own unique lights, it’s a point of pride. Here’s ceiling of the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele in Milan, where last year the crest of Milan could be found. The city’s lights seem to be saying, “Here we are, we are Milan.” I wonder if they have a dedicated light designer working year round to create their special displays. I would not be surprised! The more we explored, the more interesting and unique lights we found.

I so miss the holiday lights. I miss the pedestrian zones and the piazzas, the places where the town is alive. I miss the store displays. I miss the holiday markets. I miss the magic.

Thank you to those of you who have shared your Holiday Lights in the link up. They’ve been a bright spot in my otherwise wistful holiday season. You can still link up today! And tomorrow, a new Exploring with a Camera begins. I’ll share a few creative ways to explore lights any time of year, beyond what you’ve seen here and in other places. Don’t miss it!


Today's Many Muses Musing prompt is MAGIC. Tomorrow's prompt is BELIEVE. Come on over and join in!

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Glowing Mosaic

There is nothing as nice as a candle’s glow on a chilly winter’s eve. Unless, maybe, it’s a candle glowing in a pretty, handmade mosaic candle holder made just for you. My husband Patrick learned to mosaic in Italy, and he created these pretty holiday candle holders this year. It took a lot of trial and error, but they came out quite nice!

Today’s Many Muses Musing prompt is GLOW. Tomorrow’s prompt is MAGIC. Come on over and join in!

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