The Night Photo Summit online event will offer three days of dynamic presentations from 35-plus world-class photographers, authors, artists, astronomers, and national park and dark-sky activists. And I am honored to be invited to speak for a second time.
Abandoned airplane with the glorious Milky Way overhead. This is the cover for my first book.
What is it?
National Parks at Night holds night photography workshops that provide top-shelf education both in the classroom and in the field. They are arguably the best in the world at doing so. They have invited 35+ speakers to join in the fun of their Night Photo Summit.
The speakers at this online event will include night photographers, of course. Also speaking are authors, artists, astronomers and national park and dark-sky activists. They will speak about astronomy, dark skies, creativity and of course photo techniques — both in the field and post-processing. Presentations will include beginner, intermediate and advanced levels.
I will be one of the presenters at Night Photo Summit, discussing publishing photography books.
The varied speakers for Night Photo Summitinclude Forest Chaput, Sherry Pincus, Royce Bair, Michael Frye, Katrina Brown, Joseph DePasquale, Albert Dros, Rachel Jones Ross, Rafael Pons, Alyn Wallace, Sussan Magnano and more. And of course, it includes National Parks at Night instructors Gabriel Biderman, Chris Nicholson, Lance Keimig, Matt Hill and Tim Cooper.
I will be offering a presentation entitled “Behind the Book: My Path to Publishing a Monograph.” This will be about publishing two books on history, stories and night photography of abandoned locations. Offering examples from several of my books, I will describe my initial contact and negotiations with a publisher. I will then will take you through the process of creating the initial concept for each book. I will also discuss how the book’s topical theme informs the way I go about planning long road trips and the sorts of photos I take.
“Abandoned Planes, Trains and Automobiles: California Revealed” by Ken Lee
When is it?
Night photo with light painting in a damp cold forest in Georgia!
The Night Photo Summit will run Feb. 3-5 from 11 a. m. to 7:15 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and from 11 a.m. to 6:00 on Sunday. There will also be an “after-hours” event Friday and/or Saturday nights.
BOOKS AND PRINTS: Head on over to the Ken Lee Photography website to purchase books or look at night photography and long exposure prints and more. My books are available there and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Booktopia, Books A Million, IBS, and Aladin. If you enjoy the book, please leave a nice review, thanks!
NIGHTAXIANS VIDEO YOUTUBE PODCAST:
Night photographers Tim Little, Mike Cooper and I all use Pentax gear. We discuss this, gear, adventures, light painting, lenses, night photography, creativity, and more in this ongoing YouTube podcast. Subscribe and watch to the Nightaxians today!
Night photo at an abandoned mine in the Mojave Desert. Pentax K-1 camera.
Much of the camera industry has pivoted toward mirrorless cameras. However, there are compelling reasons why the Pentax K-1 an excellent choice. Find out about this unusual high-quality camera that often flies under the radar on the Nightaxians YouTube podcast.
Above: Joshua Tree National Park/Pentax K-1.
Above: An abandoned water park/Pentax K-1.
VISIT ME, VISIT ME!
BOOKS AND PRINTS: Head on over to the Ken Lee Photography website to purchase books or look at night photography and long exposure prints and more. My books are available there and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Booktopia, Books A Million, IBS, and Aladin. If you enjoy the book, please leave a nice review, thanks!
NIGHTAXIANS VIDEO YOUTUBE PODCAST:
Night photographers Tim Little, Mike Cooper and I all use Pentax gear. We discuss this, gear, adventures, light painting, lenses, night photography, creativity, and more in this ongoing YouTube podcast. Subscribe and watch to the Nightaxians today!
Intervalometers are inexpensive and invaluable, so why not throw one or two of these in your bag?
But what is it? An intervalometer is basically a remote shutter release that offers more controls. It allows you to tell the camera shutter when to shoot, how long the shutter should stay open and how long the shutter should remain closed until it opens again.
Night photographers use these to create star trails, time-lapse, a succession of images to “stack” to reduce noise in high ISO photos, and more while avoiding vibrations.
Intervalometers come in different forms, including wired and wireless, with some allowing you to control your camera using an app on your smartphone. I use a wired intervalometer because they are inexpensive and very reliable.
This is my trusty Vello Shutterboss II for my Pentax K-1, hence the punny “Kentax” name. Never run away from a great pun.
Understanding the settings of an intervalometer
Let’s go over some of the settings so we can better understand what they are and why we use them. I use a wired Vello Shutterboss II, and many wired intervalometers currently available have similar or identical controls. Look for the black horizontal line, which tells us which setting we are viewing or adjusting.
Self (self-timer delayed-release)
The first setting is the self-timer. This allows you to set the amount of time it takes for the camera to initiate the sequence you have programmed into the intervalometer.
This helps us with anything from doing selfies to getting into position to light paint a tree or abandoned building. This intervalometer allows you to set the time anywhere from one second to 99 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. Wow! Below, it is set to 0 seconds, so the camera will start clicking right away.
Long (timed exposure length)
How long do you want each exposure to be? Right here is where you set it! This one is set for two minutes. This is especially handy because most cameras have a maximum exposure length of 30 seconds and offer a limited amount of long exposure times.
Intervalometers allow you to specify a shot between one second and 99 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. And yes, that means that you cannot photograph anything shorter than one second.
Interval
The interval setting allows you to control the time period between two or more shots. If you want to do time-lapses, perhaps you might want some time to pass between shots. On the other hand, if you want to do star trails for “stacking” later, you want the shortest possible time between shots.
The interval shown below is set to one second, the shortest time between shots possible on most intervalometers.
No. (Number)
The number simply stands for how many photos you wish to take in your sequence of shots. Below, I have this set for 10 consecutive shots. You may set it anywhere from 1 shot to 999 shots. After running the sequence, the camera will stop unless set it to infinity. This is typically signified by two dashes (—). On this setting, your camera will shoot and shoot and shoot …
How night photographers use an intervalometer
Now that we know what the four basic settings are (I’m not going to go over whether you want a beep or not), let’s apply this to some real-life night photography scenarios.
Star trails
Many night photographers love to show the perceived movement of the stars caused by the earth’s rotation of long periods of time. Taking a succession of shots and “stacking” them together for post-processing is a great way of achieving this while minimizing noise.
In the photo above, I set my intervalometer at four minutes and photographed the starry night sky for two hours in total.
The settings would have looked like this:
Self (Self-Timer Delayed Release): 0 seconds
Long (Timed Exposure Length): 4 minutes
Interval: 1 second
No. (Number): 30
Stacking to reduce noise for milky ways
Many night photographers use intervalometers to take 15-20 photos in succession to reduce noise for their high-ISO Milky Way photos. For the above, I set my intervalometer to take photos for 20 seconds each.
For this photo, the settings are:
Self (Self-Timer Delayed Release): 0 seconds
Long (Timed Exposure Length): 20 seconds
Interval: 1 second
No. (Number): 31 (the slightly strange number tells me that I most likely set the device to click away on “infinity” while I grabbed a snack!)
Never dangle your intervalometer
I’ll leave you with this important bit of advice: Never let your intervalometer dangle from your camera. Several things may happen — none of them good!
The intervalometer jack may get pulled out of the camera
This may stop the entire shooting process you’ve set into motion. You don’t want that to happen, do you? No. No, you don’t.
The intervalometer may swing
This isn’t so great either. It doesn’t take much wind to get your intervalometer to start tapping against the tripod and cause shakes and vibrations.
The intervalometer cable will weaken
This occurs over time when the cable gets increasingly stressed. As it is, this is a common point of failure for intervalometers, so why hasten its death?
Pro tip: Velcro to the rescue!
I would never leave you hanging (apologies for the pun). There’s an easy solution, and it’s called Velcro. Yes, that’s right, add a strip of Velcro to the back of your device and to your tripod leg. No more swinging.
BOOKS AND PRINTS: Head on over to the Ken Lee Photography website to purchase books or look at night photography and long exposure prints and more. My books are available there and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Booktopia, Books A Million, IBS, and Aladin. If you enjoy the book, please leave a nice review, thanks!
NIGHTAXIANS VIDEO YOUTUBE PODCAST:
Night photographers Tim Little, Mike Cooper and I all use Pentax gear. We discuss this, gear, adventures, light painting, lenses, night photography, creativity, and more in this ongoing YouTube podcast. Subscribe and watch to the Nightaxians today!
We attempted to photograph a bus graveyard. The night photography gods threw up some hurdles. Some were dangerous. These are some of the challenges thrown our way that night.
Nighttime at a mysterious bus graveyard in the middle of the desert.
“It’s like a parking lot here!”
I met up with night photographer Tony Donofrio at the lively Lemon Festival in Upland, CA. Later that evening, we drove to a mysterious bus graveyard hidden away in the desert. The freeways were clogged. The last of them involved killing our engines for 20 minutes and sitting on a freeway as emergency vehicles kept trying to inch past everyone.
An hour commute became two. Tony and I felt that if we had known about this traffic, we might have hung out the remainder of the evening at the Lemon Festival instead.
Gas station sandwiches
We realized that we would not be able to eat at the restaurant as planned. It was already dark, and we had planned on getting there while there was still light. We grabbed some pre-packaged gas station sandwiches and ate them en route.
“Where’s Tony?”
I arrived at the bus graveyard. I quickly changed my pants before Tony’s headlights would reveal my indecent exposure. However, he didn’t show up. I called. He had stopped about a quarter mile away. He was concerned that his car would get stuck on the rough dirt road. I went back to get him.
Night photo of an abandoned school bus with the emergency door missing.
“My camera’s dead!”
I had just put a battery in my Nikon D750 camera. To my surprise, the screen suddenly showed a message that I had to reset the clock. That was surprising. I had never seen that happen before. Furthermore, none of the buttons worked. The camera was completely unresponsive.
I changed batteries and lenses, all with the same result. After 20 minutes, I gave up and began using my other camera, the Pentax K-1 with the 28-105mm lens. I would not be able to photograph with the fisheye, which was my intent. I was, however, quite disturbed by this because I had to do event photography in a few days.
Night photo of abandoned passenger bus.
Stepping on a nail
The photography gods weren’t quite done with me yet. Right after putting away my non-functioning camera, I walked around a shadowy area. Suddenly, I stepped on a nail. This went through my shoe. I could feel the nail on the bottom of my right foot! I immediately felt that something was wrong, so I stopped. A wooden board was stuck to my shoe! I carefully pried it off with my other foot.
However, because I had not put my weight down, the nail never punctured my skin. I immediately went back to the car and put on boots with steel-shank soles.
Night photo of abandoned passenger bus.
Meanwhile, on the other side …
While I was having my challenges, Tony’s photoshoot was going well. Mostly. However, he had a near scrape himself. He was lighting the interior of a bus while walking slowly backward down the center aisle. After about 10 feet, he turned around with his light. With a jolt, he realized that the center floor access panel was no longer there! One more step and he would have fallen through!
Furthermore, I was able to resuscitate the unresponsive camera, the Nikon D750. After leaving the battery in for a while, the camera became responsive again. The camera clock is powered by an independent, rechargeable power source. This is charged when the main battery is installed. When I got home, I left the battery in. After this, it seemed to work fine. The camera worked without issue for the event.
The continuing mysteries are this. I had only left the main battery out for three days. However, my camera repairman says that this is long enough to create this problem. Strange. And also what I don’t know is why the camera seized up and was completely non-responsive.
VISIT ME, VISIT ME!
BOOKS AND PRINTS: Head on over to the Ken Lee Photography website to purchase books or look at night photography and long exposure prints and more. My books are available there and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Booktopia, Books A Million, IBS, and Aladin. If you enjoy the book, please leave a nice review, thanks!
NIGHTAXIANS VIDEO YOUTUBE PODCAST:
Night photographers Tim Little, Mike Cooper and I all use Pentax gear. We discuss this, gear, adventures, light painting, lenses, night photography, creativity, and more in this ongoing YouTube podcast. Subscribe and watch to the Nightaxians today!
We are teaching a night photography workshop in the amazing Nelson ghost town near Las Vegas, Nevada. The workshop will cover the basics of night photography, composition, creativity, tips, techniques, star trails and more.
This is THE workshop for anyone who wants limitless photography opportunities with the safety of a group environment while learning a lot along the way!
Nelson is easily one of my favorite places to photograph. Whether it’s vintage cars, gas pumps, old Western buildings, soda machines, creepy dolls, a spectacular airplane “wreck” or phone booths, enormous post-apocalyptic “Mad Max”-style vehicles, vintage signs and more, you will have no shortage of fascinating subjects to photograph. This is, in short, a night photographer’s paradise.
Given its proximity to Las Vegas, it’s also quite accessible. The area is frequently used for movies, TV shows, music videos, commercials, wedding ceremonies and much more. However, we’ll have it all to ourselves.
What will you learn?
Quite a bit if you wish. You may learn various light painting techniques, night photography, composition, creative and practical techniques, star trails, light painting techniques and more, presented in a very accessible manner in a fascinating space.
You’ll also be among numerous creative photographers, giving you the opportunity to make friends, work together on photos, and share in the experience in a safe environment.
Furthermore, this isn’t one of those workshops where the instructors are inaccessible in the field. Both of us will be available throughout the evening to help if you need to. We will issue small 2-way radios for ease of communication, whether asking for help or coordinating with others.
Timothy Little
Timothy Little is a gifted nighttime landscape artist based on Cape Cod. Since 2006, he has used his moonlit and starlit photographic art to connect the natural beauty of “the Cape” with the inherent solitude of night. His portfolio is exclusive to night photography making him the only area artist specializing in this genre. He also specializes in photographing abandoned scenes in the southwest United States.
His work has been featured on Space.com, the Cape Cod Times, Cape Cod Life, Visit Massachusetts and several other New England based publications.
In addition to creating art, he shares his knowledge through group workshops and guided night tours.
Ken Lee
I am devoted to teaching night photography, light painting, star trails, and Milky Way photography. Whether that has been through the Night Photo Summit, my own workshops, or writing here at Photofocus, I hope to help you on your journey through night photography.
My photos have been featured in National Geographic Books, Omni Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Westways Magazine, and numerous other publications.
When is the night photography workshop?
The Nelson night photography workshop will be three nights: May 4-6 2023 under the beautiful Nevada desert moonlight. We will be staying in nearby Boulder City.
BOOKS AND PRINTS: Head on over to the Ken Lee Photography website to purchase books or look at night photography and long exposure prints and more. My books are available there and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Booktopia, Books A Million, IBS, and Aladin. If you enjoy the book, please leave a nice review, thanks!
NIGHTAXIANS VIDEO YOUTUBE PODCAST:
Night photographers Tim Little, Mike Cooper and I all use Pentax gear. We discuss this, gear, adventures, light painting, lenses, night photography, creativity, and more in this ongoing YouTube podcast. Subscribe and watch to the Nightaxians today!
What lens is good for night photography? It turns out there are quite a few. And not all of them are crazy expensive.
Please note that I am not discussing astrophotography, deep space photography of celestial objects or photos involving an equatorial mount or tracker. Those would have different considerations. I will give examples based on a full-frame sensor. Focal lengths for crop sensors would be correspondingly smaller. However, the general approach would be the same.
Wide aperture
The speed of a lens refers to how large its maximum diameter is. A lens with a larger maximum aperture is called a “fast lens” because it can achieve the same exposure with a faster shutter speed.
Generally speaking, most night photographers also prefer a lens with a larger aperture such as f/2.8, f/2.4 or even wider. This lets in more light. This is especially crucial if you are interested in photographing stars, which are quite faint.
However, for night photography during a full moon, such as when one is photographing abandoned areas over the course of several minutes or more, a wide aperture lens is not necessary. Many people photograph at f/8 and ISO 200 during this time.
Ultra wide-angle lens
This image was created with a Pentax 15-30mm f/2.8 ultra wide-angle lens at 15mm, at the launch area of an abandoned missile base overlooking Los Angeles. Although this is considered a “fast” lens at f/2.8, I wanted to show that night photos can be created at much smaller apertures such as f/8. This has the added bonus of having a broader depth of field, keeping more of the scene sharp and in focus. During full moon photography, you can use the autofocus feature quite often, or a bright flashlight to illuminate a foreground object and use autofocus. Settings: f/8, ISO 200, 3 minutes.
The most common choice is an ultra wide-angle lens. This allows you to include much of the night sky. Also, if you wish to photograph the stars as pinpoints — such as in the case with the Milky Way — an ultra-wide-angle lens allows you to use longer exposure lengths without overt trailing of the stars.
This Milky Way photo in the Mojave Desert was photographed with an Irix 15mm f/2.4 prime ultra wide-angle manual focus lens. This has the added feature of having a detent at infinity, allowing the photographer to instantly lock the focus to infinity, which is ideal for photographing stars. Settings: f/2.5, ISO 4000, 20 seconds. Stacked to lessen the amount of noise.
If photographing Milky Ways is your thing but you don’t have the budget for one of the other more expensive zoom lenses, this is a great choice. The Blackstone (B&H | Amazon) and Firefly (B&H | Amazon) lenses by Irix are both very affordable.
They’re also considerably lighter than their ultra-wide zoom lens counterparts and do not have a bulbous front element, which means that it accepts screw-on filters. Rokinon and Laowa also make ultra wide-angle lenses that are worthy of consideration and are not crazy expensive.
This photo in Joshua Tree National Park was taken with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 ultra-wide lens at 14mm. This is also quite a sharp lens, and like the aforementioned 15-30mm f/2.8 lens, has autofocus. The downside of this lens? It’s heavy and has a bulbous front element Settings: f/8, ISO 400, 3 minutes. Five photos stacked for a total of 15 minutes.
Fisheye lens for night photography
A fisheye can be a great choice. Many fisheye lenses have a 180-degree view and therefore, if pointed straight up, can photograph the entire night sky. Or they can create very distorted, creative images.
This image was created with a Rokinon 12mm f/2.8 fisheye lens. Instant weirdness. A fisheye can help an image stand out from a crowd by offering a different perspective. Also, a lens like this is relatively inexpensive compared to the other lenses I am discussing here.
Longer focal lengths
It’s perfectly OK to use longer focal lengths as well. The stars will trail much faster because you are zoomed in on them and everything else more, but this is perfectly normal.
Longer lenses can be great for compressing the scene, making the background elements look larger and creating drama. And if some of these background elements are stars, fantastic.
This is a night photo using a longer focal length using a Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens. I wanted to “compress” the background cliff so it would seem even larger. Like some of the other examples, I was able to use the autofocus feature of this lens by illuminating the house with a flashlight first. Settings: f/8, ISO 800, 4 minutes. Each photo was stacked for a total exposure of 20 minutes.
Choices, choices
Like anything else, you would choose a lens for its overall usefulness as well as your personal aesthetics. Not everyone, for instance, might want to photograph with a fisheye or a long lens. Or perhaps not everyone might want to have really wide angles all the time. How do you want to present the world?
VISIT ME, VISIT ME!
BOOKS AND PRINTS: Head on over to the Ken Lee Photography website to purchase books or look at night photography and long exposure prints and more. My books are available there and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Booktopia, Books A Million, IBS, and Aladin. If you enjoy the book, please leave a nice review, thanks!
NIGHTAXIANS VIDEO YOUTUBE PODCAST:
Night photographers Tim Little, Mike Cooper and I all use Pentax gear. We discuss this, gear, adventures, light painting, lenses, night photography, creativity, and more in this ongoing YouTube podcast. Subscribe and watch to the Nightaxians today!
What are the best camera settings for Milky Way and “astrophotography”? We offer this and some tips to make it easy for you.
Double Arch in Arches National Park in Utah. Camera settings are 20 seconds f/2.8 ISO 4000.
Is offering camera settings meaningless?
Some night photographers argue that offering camera settings for Milky Way photography is useless. In a way, they’re right. There are so many variables. For instance, it depends on what kind of lens. The larger the aperture the lens has, the more light it lights in. The wider the focal length, the longer the amount of time you can set your camera’s exposure length. Then there are atmospheric variables, light pollution and more that affect the settings.
A discussion about settings could take up quite a lot of space in a book. However, I’ll try and give you starting points.
Assumptions before giving camera settings
To stop the variables from spinning out of control, we are going to assume that you have a relatively modern digital camera and an ultra wide angle lens with a focal length of about 14mm or 15mm since that seems to be the most commonly used. We will also assume that you are not using a star tracker, and that your camera is simply mounted on a tripod.
Starting camera settings for Milky Way photographs
I like to begin with a 20-second exposure, an aperture of f/2.8 at ISO 3200 or 4000.
Exposure
20-second exposures are typically long enough to gather light, but short enough that your stars register as relative pinpoints of light. If you can reduce this further, great. If not, this should be a good starting point for a lens with a focal length of 14mm or 15mm.
Aperture
If your lens has a larger aperture than f/2.8, such as f/2.0 or f/2.4, try to use it. However, some lenses have distortion in the corners if you photograph “wide open” (at the largest aperture). Look for things such as “angel wings” or “UFO”-looking stars in the corners. If there are none, great. If there are, reduce the aperture back to f/2.8 or until that stops.
ISO
Boosting the ISO to 3200 or 4000 should be bright enough to adequately capture the Milky Way without blowing out the highlights.
A hidden arch in Mojave Desert, Southwest US. This is admittedly “stacked”. However, the settings for the sky are 15 seconds f/2.5 ISO 4000. I was able to drop the exposure down to 15 seconds because my lens could be opened up to f/2.5.
Adjusting from the beginning camera settings
Just like you would with a day photograph, all your camera adjustments are the same.
“My image is too dark!”
This is the most common thing people encounter. If your image is too dark, you can make it brighter by lengthening the exposure, opening the aperture (if that’s possible), and/or increasing the ISO.
Each has trade-offs, of course. Sometimes, lengthening the exposure might turn your stars as pinpoints into elongated trails. Or increasing the ISO might introduce more noise into your image, although you could address that in post-processing by using Topaz Labs Denoise AI or other noise reduction software. I’ve had good luck using this software for Milky Way photos without decreasing the sharpness and detail of the Milky Way.
“My image is too bright!”
This is less common with Milky Way photos, but can occur more frequently when doing star trails or photographing near a full moon.
You can decrease the exposure time, make the aperture smaller, and/or decrease the ISO.
Further information
I write a lot about night photography here. When you see a night photo, you can click on the image and see what the camera settings were. You can learn a lot from these by looking at the image, trying to figure out what the ambient light was, and figure out why that setting was chosen. After seeing a number of photos, you can also begin to see patterns emerging and begin to figure out why certain settings are chosen over others.
VISIT ME, VISIT ME!
BOOKS AND PRINTS: Head on over to the Ken Lee Photography website to purchase books or look at night photography and long exposure prints and more. My books are available there and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Booktopia, Books A Million, IBS, and Aladin. If you enjoy the book, please leave a nice review, thanks!
NIGHTAXIANS VIDEO YOUTUBE PODCAST:
Night photographers Tim Little, Mike Cooper and I all use Pentax gear. We discuss this, gear, adventures, light painting, lenses, night photography, creativity, and more in this ongoing YouTube podcast. Subscribe and watch to the Nightaxians today!
I was recovering from surgery for a detached retina in my right eye. Here’s what I found.
Flashes and floaters
24 hours after the surgery I experienced floaters and flashes in my right eye, I was on the phone with an eye doctor. When I saw the first flash of light in my peripheral vision, I had thought, “That was strange. Was that the reflection from a car whizzing past?” The second time, I knew something was wrong.
The doctor said that I had lattice degeneration. This is a thinning of the peripheral retina, the tissue that lines the back wall of the eye. This also helps maintain sharp vision. Lattice degeneration is a cause for concern. Here, the retina is more susceptible to tearing, which can lead to retinal detachment. The doctor made an appointment for five more weeks.
Night photo of an enormous sculpture by Ricardo Breceda, located in Borrego Springs, CA.
Distracting
The next time I went out to the Arizona desert to photograph at night, my vision had grown increasingly worse. The flashes and floaters were more prominent than ever before. Worse than that, my vision in the right eye had grown a little hazier.
The squeaky wheel
I called the doctor again. I wanted to see him now, not in several more weeks. However, the receptionist said that he was out of town. I kept the old appointment. However, thinking it over, I felt I really should see a doctor, so I called again. Same message. So I called again, saying the same thing again. This time, I got an appointment with a different doctor the following morning. Sometimes, the third time really is the charm.
Uh, oh!
Night photo of dinosaurs battling. Sculptures by Ricardo Breceda, Borrego Springs, CA.
It didn’t take long. The doctor said, “You have a detached retina.” He explained that since I was nearsighted, I was more susceptible to lattice degeneration and detached retinas. Swell. He made an appointment with another doctor specializing in retinal surgery. In particular, pneumatic retinopexy and a scleral buckle surgery, would be done during the same visit.
Recovery
Recovery involved staying face down for eight days all day and all night. Yes, that means while sleeping. Or attempting to sleep. I am very active and kinetic. Therefore, I was convinced this was one of the Seven Layers of Hell. My face hurt. My back hurt. And of course, my eye hurt. And with that, I also had headaches for the next three weeks. I rarely looked at myself in the mirror for the first few days. I looked like I had gone 15 rounds with Mike Tyson.
The blob
No, this isn’t the blob from my eye. In fact, it was larger than this, and yes, right in the center of my vision. This is one of my macro experiments during the pandemic.
I had a weird bubble in my eye from one of the procedures. This air bubble slowly pushes the retina back into place. However, to me, it looked like an enormous blob. Slowly over two weeks, the blob diminished, then broke into several smaller blobs, then went away completely. I was overjoyed when it went away.
Blurry photo near sunset, Borrego Springs. While my vision in my right eye isn’t quite this blurry, it isn’t far off either.
Choosing the location to do night photography
A month after surgery, I was ready to get outside and enjoy some night photography in the desert. I chose Borrego Springs. One of the reasons was that the magnificent sculptures that I was going to photograph were only between five to 10 minutes from the motel. The other reason was that the ground near the sculptures was level and didn’t have many sharp pointy plants.
Night photo of a sculpture by Ricardo Breceda in Borrego Springs, CA. April 2022.
Other strategies for doing night photography
While my right eye was healing quite well and I was told I could drive, swim, and exercise, my vision was still blurry. To compensate for this, I began using reading glasses. Rather than fumble around in the dark for them, I purchased eyeglass straps so they could hang around my neck when I wasn’t using them.
I also used a Coast HX4 80-lumen Clip Light with the red light on to see my way around. Surprisingly, I didn’t need this too much because it was during a full moon, and I could see reasonably well.
When reviewing my photos, I blew them up more than I usually would just to make sure I had focused properly. I used my reading glasses to make absolutely sure. I often used Live View. With Live View, I found I could also use my reading glasses effectively. If I needed to, I could also shine my light around to see what was going on more.
I also used the autofocus in my camera. I shined a light on the sculpture I was photographing, used the autofocus, and then switched back to manual focus so the camera wouldn’t keep attempting to acquire focus again.
Other thoughts
I was rather pleased that I could photograph so easily in the dark, even with one eye having rather blurry vision. I was able to photograph again the following month as well. I again photographed during a full moon, photographing some unusual art installations in Wonder Valley. And this time, I had also gotten some specially made glasses from the optometrist, so driving at night was much better. I was very specific with what I wanted with the glasses, and they made them with this in mind.
Night photography at the end of the world, or at least Wonder Valley in California. May 2022.
I found that one of the challenges was the extremes between bright lights and dark. If it were mostly dark, I didn’t have that many issues at all. But if there were large bright signs and storefronts in an otherwise very dark environment, that sometimes caused haziness. My new glasses corrected for this. I didn’t have them when I photographed in Borrego Springs, so that’s largely why I chose to photograph a location that was only minutes from the motel.
Technically, my eye has not recovered fully. That takes about six months after surgery. Shortly after that point, I will have cataract surgery. After that, my vision in my right eye should be considerably sharper, and not the blurry mess it is now.
Night photo of part of the enormous rattledragon sculpture by Ricardo Breceda. April 2022.
And yes, I did swim at night. While the Milky Way wasn’t arching over the sky, the full moon and the starry skies were. And that’s still magical. And I felt particularly joyous after spending such a long time staying face down in the house.
VISIT ME, VISIT ME!
BOOKS AND PRINTS: Head on over to the Ken Lee Photography website to purchase books or look at night photography and long exposure prints and more. My books are available there and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Booktopia, Books A Million, IBS, and Aladin. If you enjoy the book, please leave a nice review, thanks!
NIGHTAXIANS VIDEO YOUTUBE PODCAST:
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I created otherworldly night portraits of a musical group during a winter evening in the California desert. I’ll describe how I went about photographing these surreal images.
Firing up the machine
I was contacted by electronic/psychedelic band Bloomfield Machine, a band masterminded by Brian Kassan, who has also created music with Chewy Marble and The Wondermints. He wanted some night photos that looked, well, like my photos. We chose Joshua Tree National Park for its strange landscape.
Although the weather forecasts called for extremely cloudy skies, we were happy to find out that it was only partially cloudy. I love clouds at night. They add a lot of texture and interest to photos. I also love the way they “smear” during long exposure photographs.
Deciding on the camera settings
As those of you who read my articles know, I love to photograph near a full moon. It illuminates much of the surrounding area and is perfect for light painting.
Because the band would need to stand still, I decided to photograph with a 30-second exposure instead of 2 or 3-minute exposures. To do this, I figured I would use an ISO of 800. ISO 800 still does not produce very much noise, certainly not with the Pentax K-1 or Nikon D750. But it would create enough light sensitivity so I could get a decent exposure, even at an aperture of f/8.
The band said that they wanted a little bit of blur so it would look a bit strange. Otherwise, I could have done a quicker exposure, such as 10 or 15 seconds. But 30 seconds was perfect for me. This would allow me to be able to run around and illuminate the scene from several different areas while the camera shutter was open! Excellent!
Fisheye night portrait in Joshua Tree National Park, CA. Taken with the Rokinon 12mm f/2.8 fisheye lens.
The look I wanted through lighting
I really wanted the band to pop out of the photo and have a three-dimensional quality to them. I decided that I would illuminate them using a handheld Nikon SB-600 Speedlight from the side, popping the flash manually. This would create shadow and depth. Also, this way, I wouldn’t pop a flash right in their face. And it would “freeze” them so there would be less blur.
Beginning the exposure
I positioned the two musicians and focused on them. I did this with two setups. I had the Pentax K-1 with a Pentax 28-105mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. I chose this lens for its clarity and general flexibility with its wider focal range than my ultra wide-angle lens. For weirder fisheye angles, I used the Nikon D750 with a Rokinon 12mm f/2.8 fisheye lens.
Sometimes, when people ask what I do as a night photographer, I tell them, “I run around in the dark waving lights.” It’s actually reasonably accurate. I used two handheld lights, the Nikon SB-600 Speedlight and the ProtoMachines LED2 handheld light painting device. I also had a Viola Luxli LED panel packed and ready to go, but I never needed to use it. And run around I did!
Adding color and shadows
Night photo with the band, Joshua Tree National Park, CA. Taken with the Pentax 28-105mm f/3.5-5.6 lens.
After triggering the camera for its 30-second exposure, I would run to the side and pop the speedlight manually. By this, I literally mean that I would hold the flash off-camera and pop it by pressing the flash button. PZAWWWW!! This would illuminate the two people in the band.
For some of the photos, I wanted more color and interest. After popping the flash, I would jam it in my pocket and then run to the side and illuminate the rocks in back of the band with the ProtoMachines light.
Fisheye night portrait in Joshua Tree National Park, CA with some extra backlighting in red for good measure. Taken with the Rokinon 12mm f/2.8 fisheye lens.
During one of the fisheye photos, I did all of the above. Then after that, I ran over and stood in back of each of them for several seconds, shining a red light so that it would produce eerie shadows as well. Fun!
As a bonus, running kept me warm and gave me some exercise, even while photographing on a winter night! But of course, I also had to finish my lighting within 30 seconds as well. And I wanted to keep moving so I would minimize my chances of showing up in the photo.
Chimping
Of course, the band kept wanting to check out the photos. Part of this was that they wanted to make sure that their eyes weren’t closed. After all, I was popping a flash at them! Despite counting down, we did get a few photos where one person’s eyes were closed.
I pointed out how their face was sharp where the flash had illuminated them, but a little blurry on the other side. They loved that and wanted to keep it because they wanted the photos to look “extra weird.” Mission accomplished.
Processing the photos
The photos were relatively straightforward to process since they were all single exposures. Although there wasn’t that much noise, I wanted to make sure that the images were clean. The band, after all, might print some large posters. Therefore, I ran the photos through Topaz DeNoise AI before doing anything else. After that, I simply made a few adjustments using LuminarAI as a plugin in Adobe Photoshop, then using Lumenzia luminosity masks for some light dodging and burning.
“Are these composites?”
This is the question I am asked most often by other photographers. No. They are all single exposures.
Windy night photoshoots in winter
We had arrived at our location in Joshua Tree around 4 p.m. By 7:30 p.m., we were already packing up. I was of course used to this sort of thing by now and had dressed for the cold weather. In fact, I had photographed until 10 p.m. the previous night, stopping because I didn’t want to “stay out too late” and be tired the next day.
But to be fair, the two musicians had been asked to stand still for long periods of time. And it was also windy, which added a real “bite” to the air.
The band said, “We love what we’ve seen! Time to pack up!” One said that his toes felt numb. Not to worry, though. Before long, we were enjoying a nice hot meal in town.
Altogether, we had created 16 promotional photos for Bloomfield Machine, with six of them being long exposure night portraits. This was for sure a fun, creative, productive night.
VISIT ME, VISIT ME!
BOOKS AND PRINTS: Head on over to the Ken Lee Photography website to purchase books or look at night photography and long exposure prints and more. My books are available there and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Booktopia, Books A Million, IBS, and Aladin. If you enjoy the book, please leave a nice review, thanks!
On Halloween day, I was rumbling toward an old airfield, littered with rusting abandoned vehicles, airplanes, and more. I had just called the previous day spontaneously, wondering if I could run up and photograph at night. It was a special day. Yes, Halloween, but a Halloween with a blue moon. What could be better? I was only too happy to make the three and a half hour drive to the airfield for some night photography.
In honor of Halloween, I had also brought a bag full of creepy looking dolls. They’d be difficult to explain if I got pulled over by California Highway Patrol. Thankfully, the only thing I stopped for was gas and tacos.
Just the right amount of cobwebs, dust and rust
After photographing some rusty airplanes and trucks, I found the perfect setting for my Halloween photo. I opened the creaky door of an abandoned Chevy flatbed. The cab was perfect. Just the right amount of cobwebs, dust and rust.
I became rather choosy about posing the bunny. The bunny should slump a certain way. I wanted the eye to look warily elsewhere. And also, I wanted one ear up, the other down. This was not something I usually did.
A bunny, truck, cobwebs, rust, and a blue moon: the perfect recipe for a Halloween night photo.
Setting up the camera
Satisfied, I set up the Pentax K-1, using a Lensbaby Edge 35 Optic. This creates these quasi-tilt-shift blurs, keeping a slice of the image in focus. During daylight, this lens is somewhat challenging to focus. At night, it was really difficult.
I managed to adjust the slice of focus so that it was on the eye and head of the bunny. The rest would fall into blur. I opened the shutter. Holding a ProtoMachines LED2 in my hand, I carefully shined it overhead, trying to get some texture and illuminate the bunny in an abnormal, creepy sort of way, keeping most of the cab in almost total darkness. I “grazed” some of the rusty springs, steering wheel and cobwebs with the light quickly, just for good measure. Satisfied that I completed the photo, I closed the shutter.
A 75-second exposure, all done. Good, weird, creepy, and dark, just as it should be.
I continued photographing among the creaky trucks and airplanes. Tonight was Halloween. Tonight was a good night.
VISIT ME, VISIT ME!
MY WEBSITE: Head on over to the Ken Lee Photography website to purchase books or look at night photography and long exposure photos. My latest book, “Abandoned Southern California: The Slowing of Time” is available there and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Booktopia, Books A Million, IBS, and Aladin. If you enjoy the book, please leave a nice review.
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