March 4, 2012

Mt. Vernon st. Brighton, MA



To take this photo a number of things happened simultaneously while the shutter was open. For starters the flash fired, exposing the foreground and mid-ground, which "burned" them into the picture. The background had the lighting of street lamps causing them also to expose clearly. While the flash fired and the shutter opened I zoomed in with my lens. Making the streaks of light expose as lines leading to the center of the image. The foreground (the street, sidewalk and fire-hydrant) remains clear because after the flash fired that space was nearly black and reflected very few light waves to the imaging sensor. The houses, street lights and moon at the top are all lines of light because while I was zooming in they were still sending light waves to the sensor. 

A lot happened to make this image, but keep in mind that it only took a fraction of a second. I hit the shutter button on the camera while zooming in. 

I took a dozen or more shots this way. This is the one that turned out best. There is always a process of trial and error. Persistence and playing around pay off. Enjoy the process, or you will never take enough photographs to develop your technique or learn unique ways of shooting.

Below is how I would edit the picture.




And below is a very different example of a photo I took during the same shoot. Don't ask me how I got this one. I am trying to figure that out myself. It must have been a perfect camera rotation 




1 comment:

Unknown said...

I took this one by zooming out with the lens while the shutter was open collecting the light. A little trick that point and shoots lack.