Dark Photography School

In my previous article I discussed ways you can create light trails by rocking the camera on the tripod when the shutter is open. Almost as an afterthought I mentioned that

If you’d like to get especially adventuresome, you could combine zoom with tilting the camera while the shutter is open

My demonstrated lack of context has prompted me to begin a new series. This is the first of many everyday examples of how you can utilize your lens’s zoom feature while leaving the shutter open. The first part in this series is titled Window Shopping because the two items featured were spotted in shop windows late at night.

EXIF: 100 ISO, 1.5 sec., f/22, 28mm focal length, flash off

Can you tell what I used to create the star burst in the photo above?

It was a star lantern hanging in the window of a gift shop in downtown Asheville. Notice the exposure was only one and a half seconds. That is plenty of time to zoom and capture some unique movement. The camera was still throughout the exposure, but I zoomed in and left it at it’s furthest reach. This gave the stars the most light while closest to the viewer.

EXIF: Unknown
This photo is just a stick figure as a neon sign. I don’t have the EXIF data because I took this photo with a 35mm film camera a few years ago. I wasn’t very diligent at writing down exposure settings. If you are still using solely a 35mm film camera, bless you for your perseverance.