AUTHORS NOTE: Due to the physical stresses of surgical recovery The Celebration Of silence will only be posting once daily for the month of March. We will resume our twice daily postings in April!
Greetings again dear readers! If you haven’t been keeping up with my recent escapdes I suggest you have a look at the main page for a look at the latest posts!
Now on to the important business of the day, photographs!
As many of you know by now I have been spending the month recovering from a tympanomastoid surgery and, while the surgery went swimmingly it has left me rather unable to do very much. So amid my many naps and taking of pills I have spent a good many hours gazing out the window at the many birds flying past and wishing I could get out there with my camera! Unfortunately, the residual dizziness from the surgery makes this impossible without a friends and daylight hours are when the majority of folks are at work. I have one truly lovely friend who has been ever so nice and has taken me out nearly every evening after she’s done her things for the day, which is completely wonderful and super appreciated. However there is a distinct lack of birds during the dark hours of the day so my camera and I have been foiled again!
Or have we?…..
In desperate times come desperate measures and it appears that, for a stranded bird phototographer, the old adage about ports and storms comes true! Since I can’t get to the birds I thought I should use my time wisely and try learning a thing or two about night photography!And truly, it’s been fun on the evening walks to try capturing something new….trying different exposures, different spots, different compositions. This is a whole new world for me, my only previous try at night shooting was this rather good try from a local fireworks festival
While that was a fun outing I never really gave night shooting another shot until, on impulse, I grabbed this shot one evening
Well PHHHHBBBT. That didn’t quite turn into what I wanted (or anything at all really). True to my curious and stubborn nature however, the shot stuck in my head as an “almost great”.
Soon enough I found myself on top of a nearby parking structure trying to figure out just how the hell this worked. A few well worded google searches, some experimentation and quite a lot of muttering, swearing and fussing at the camera later and I had my first honest to goodness night shot.
Seeing this shot suddenly coalesce on my screen and realizing I had finally figured something out correctly sent me and my ever patient friend on a series of directed walks as I tried again and again to figure this thing out.
While there have been few drop-dead-gorgeous successes I managed to draw on a comment local photographer Mikah Sharkey made to me during our recent outing. “If the photographer is comfortable they’re not going to get a good shot”. Taking this advice rather literally, I started looking for that off angle and found it one evening flat on my belly on the sidewalk.
While I would like to do more with the shot, I have to say, for a first try it’s not too bad, and it’s enough of a success to keep me coming back for more.
So now I pass on the challenge to you, my lovely readers. Take a photo of something you’ve never tried to capture before and send it in to celebrationofsilenceblog@gmail.com or link it to this post! Let’s step out of our comfort zones and make some magic!
The Celebration Of Silence 
One Comment Add yours