Tag Archives: Slow Shutter Speed

Night Lights

Posted by dkrashb on

I haven’t shot the Chattanooga skyline at night for a long time.  And I probably shouldn’t have now, either.  The sky wasn’t doing anything particularly interesting.  What attracted me though, was the changing lights on the aquarium.

The aquarium hadn’t been lit at all for many months.  Then, suddenly, the lights turned on and they were red.  As were the lights on the Blue Cross Blue Shield building.  And the lights running along the pier, the lights on the Riverwalk on this side of the river, and even the lights running along the  Walnut Street bridge were covered in red film.

I asked someone if they knew why the lights had suddenly appeared in red.  They guessed it was for the upcoming “Wine over Water” event, but that really didn’t make sense.

I googled Chattanooga and red lights.  I got hits on all the traffic cameras at intersections in Chattanooga.

Then, on the night when I finally broke out the camera, the Blue Cross Blue Shield building was lit in pink and the aquarium lights started changing colors.  The aquarium lights rotated from pink to red to orange to yellow to pale blue to dark blue to purple to pink, and finally, back to red.

I guess I should have just made a video of it because I ended up taking way too many pictures trying to get one of each color.

Then, like a kid suffering from ADD, I was more taken by the streaking head and tail lights of the traffic going through the scene than by the lights on the aquarium.  What is it about long exposures with steaks of car lights going through them that’s so much fun?

But, back to the mystery of the colored lights.  After shooting these, several things happened that made me suspect the red and pink lights were for breast cancer awareness.  It started when I saw a “Save the Tatas” bumper sticker on a car in the grocery store parking lot.

Then, when I crossed the Walnut Street bridge, I realized there was a lighted ribbon symbol that could have been for heart disease awareness, but that’s in February.  Then,  the building lights were appearing in pink more often than in red.  And, I learned that the 30th was the Chattanooga Race for the Cure.

So, I have concluded that the colored lights are supposed to be for breast cancer awareness and that they just started a little early (October is breast cancer awareness month) in honor of the race.  That’s my theory anyway.

I still haven’t figured out why most of the lights are red instead of pink.  Perhaps my theory will be proven or disproven as the month of October progresses.

In the meantime, I’m having fun with lights of all colors.

A Different Kind of Flash

Posted by dkrashb on

As many of you may know by now, I am fascinated by the sky.  The one subject in the sky I’ve had absolutely zero success with is lightning.  This comes with some irony as my brother has been an engineer on a project that monitors and predicts lighting for over 25 years now.

I’ve never managed to capture an actual lightning bolt.  In truth, this is probably because I haven’t put a lot of effort into it.  I have, for example, never asked my brother to let me know when they are expecting lightning storms in my area so that I might plan to shoot lightning.

On the infrequent occasions when I had my gear, I have rarely been in a place where I could get a good view of the lightning to shoot it.

At long last, I live in a place where I have a great view of the sky and I often see lightning while I am at home doing nothing more important than shooting lightning.  That doesn’t necessarily mean I actually attempt to shoot it.  Why?  What causes a person who really wants to capture a great image of lightning to sit on one’s duff and watch the light show unfold without so much as pulling one’s camera out of its bag?

Frustration.

That is the crux of it.  The times I have gone to the trouble of setting up, adjusting the settings (usually involving a few googles along the way), and then shot and shot and shot some more only to come up empty have made me bitter when it comes to lightning.

Oddly, when I see a bolt of lightning flash across the sky, it doesn’t necessarily look that fast.  Perhaps it’s because it’s burned an image of itself onto my retina?

For this morning’s shoot, I started out setting a fairly open aperture for a sky (f/8) based on some advice from the web along with 100 ISO and a long shutter speed.  I quickly realized that the guy who wrote this advice assumed the sky would be dark.  With lightning at sunrise, I really wanted more depth of field.  I also wanted a fast shutter speed to freeze the clouds, which were blowing fast across my field of view.  However, I sacrificed on the fast shutter speed in favor of capturing a lightning bolt.

The lightning kept flashing within the clouds, refusing to show itself.  Then, suddenly, it flared straight at the ground.  Lucky for me, the shutter was still open.  My first lightning bolt!  Then I caught another a few minutes later.

I combined the two into one image using Photomatix (which is not what it’s designed for), but it turned my lightning bolts pink.

I shot for a long time, but there were no more bolts.  I returned indoors to comfort the dogs (Twiggy is visiting again).  As soon as I sat down, a web of lightning bolts flashed across the sky.  Shoot!  I mean, Darn–I didn’t shoot!