The Night Skye News
for December, 2013
What's around the corner in 2014...


Thanks for subscribing to The Night Skye News. For many of you, this will be the first one you receive. It's a week past Thanksgiving, and this is my first newsletter of 2013. It's not that there's been nothing to report- in fact quite the contrary. First though, I want to take a minute to express my gratitude in the spirit of the season. I am truly grateful for the many people- workshop students, print collectors, colleagues, and friends who have supported my work in any number of ways in the last couple of years. When I quit my job as an ophthalmic photographer in 1995 and started down this path, it seemed unlikely that I would ever make my living solely as a Night Photographer, much less riding the front edge of the incredible wave of popularity that Night Photography, and now Light Painting have recently experienced. It's been tremendously rewarding to introduce and teach Night Photography to so many people, and to feel like the work I do is making a difference in some small way. Thank you everyone.

 

 

Workshops and Tours for 2014
 
I've posted several workshops and photo tours for 2014 on the site, with more on the way. For now, I'd like to point out the next two programs. In February (damn, that's soon) Scott Martin and I will be leading our second Northern Lights tour to Iceland. We are working with a new guide this year, and are truly excited about the possibilities of sharing this experience with some of you. Last year I ran two full winter tours to different parts of the country, and wow, what an amazing place. The landscape is remarkable, the Aurora Borealis unforgettable, and the winter, surprisingly temperate. As someone who has spent the past 14 winters in the Boston area, Iceland was warm by comparison. The trip features Night Photography and Northern Lights along the photogenic south coast, and runs from February 2-11, 2014.

 

 

Scott and I are also leading a 4 Night Workshop called Mastering The Night in Death Valley National Park from March 19-22, 2014. This workshop will take place in the waning stage of the lunar cycle which will offer us some moonlight, as well as dark skies for star point and Milky Way photography. This is an advanced workshop that's geared towards photographers with some night photography experience under their belt, or at least accomplished amateurs with a strong understanding of digital photography, and confidence in your ability to handle your camera on a tripod, in the dark. Register today, or if you have questions about whether or not this workshop is for you, please get in touch.

 

Night Photography Books
  

As many of you know, I'm working on a new book, tentatively called Night Photography and Light Painting- Finding Your Way In The Dark. If that sounds somewhat familiar, the book falls somewhere between a second edition and a new book. It still covers the basics, as well as more advanced topics of Night Photography, updated for current technology and trends, but also including a greatly expanded section on Light Painting and Light Drawing, as well as a guest chapter on Time lapse at Night by Keith Kiska, and guest sections by Troy Paiva, Alister Benn, and Rick Whitacre. The project is taking longer than expected as I have changed and expanded the scope of the project, but I think you'll find it worth the wait. In the mean time, I'd like to point out a couple of other new Night Photography books by friends Gabriel Biderman, Noel Kerns, and Tom Paiva

  





Gabe's book was co-written with Tim Cooper, and is part of Peach Pit Press' From Snapshots to Great Shots series, and I think the title is apt. The book provides a thorough introduction to Night Photography in a direct, easy to absorb fashion, and is especially suited for those who are relatively new to Photography.




Noel's book is a monograph of his nocturnal explorations titled Night Watch, and has been a long time coming. This is a beautiful and hefty tome that should be a part of every Night Photography book collection. It was featured recently on the Huffington Post!
Tom Paiva has a monograph coming out in 2014 on his five year San Francisco Bay Bridge project that will be published by the prestigious Nazraeli Press. 
Tom has been working for 5 years photographing the construction of the new Eastern Span of the bridge, which opened in September 2013. The entire project was shot on film using a 4x5 view camera.  Many of the images were shot at twilight and at night. 
Keep an eye out for this one.
 

 

Translations
 

I almost forgot to mention that I recently received a few copies of the first edition of my book in Chinese! Much to my surprise, it was published with a different cover image, one that isn't even mine! It is an image by Jens and Cenci of Lightmark in Germany which appears on page 223 in the English language version.
The book has been more successful than I ever imagined, has been reprinted 4 times in the US, and translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Chinese with a Russian version on the way. I'm just stunned. I have a few copies of the Spanish, Chinese, and one remaining copy of the French version please get in touch if you want one.

 

 

New Developments in Night Photography

  

Light Goes On
Light Goes On/ Darren Pearson

It is an exciting time in the world of photography - not only with the maturation of digital photography, but the seemingly countless forms of social media and ubiquitous smart phones that are transforming the way we make, view and even think of photography. I'm certainly starting to rethink a lot of what I do, and how I do it. There are two distinct trends in Night Photography at the moment- high ISO nature photography and Light Painting in all of its many forms. 

 

High ISO shooting is facilitated by amazing new cameras like the Canon 6D and 5D mkIII (currently on sale at Amazon for $2899- for a $600 discount), and Nikon's D610 and D800 cameras. These cameras and a few other current generation mid to high end DSLRs are capable of excellent quality images at ISOs of 6400 or higher. This is significant because when combined with a fast lens, it's possible to record the starry night sky and milky way without any movement in the stars. We're not limited to long exposures with star trails anymore.

 

I try to distinguish between Light Painting and Drawing by categorizing images with physical subjects that have been lit as Light Painting (the kind of work I do), and images where light itself is the subject as Light Drawing (See Darren's video, above). Many people just lump the two together, but regardless of what you call it, Light painting is HOT. No one better exemplifies this better than Darren Pearson, aka Darius Twin, who recently released this jaw dropping video of skateboarding skeletons.

 

New Gear and Gizmos for Night Photography

   

I'd like to turn you on to my new favorite iPhone photography app: Photo Pills. At first glance, Photo Pills may seem like an alternative to the venerable Photographer's Ephemeris- but it's much more, and I think, better. Like P.E., Photo Pills is a map-centric natural light, photo planning tool, but it also plan and collect an exportable shot list with all of the relevant data for future use- either your own custom location, or from the app's database of over 10,000 locations world wide. It also has a wide range of supplemental calculators for time lapse settings, long exposures, depth of field, startrail simulations, field of view, and max. exposure time maintain star points.

 

Let's say that you wanted to take a stunning photograph of the full moon rising through a stone archway in Iceland, with perfectly balanced exposure between the foreground, the sky, and the moon, and you've heard that it only happens every couple of years. With this app, you could plan the shot from the comfort of your home, and know exactly when you had to be there so you could plan your trip accordingly. There's a bit of a learning curve, but as Alister Benn writes in his excellent eBook Seeing the Unseen, being prepared is at least half of getting the shot.

 

 

There are two powerful new tools for light artists, ProtoMachines LED2
 , the second generation light from George Loo. The LED2 is a Light Painting tool with step-less variable output covering a range of 8 stops, and infinitely variable color control to produce a full spectrum of brilliant colors. With 8 user-configurable slots to store color, brightness, and exposure time combinations, it's well worth the $525 price tag. Troy  Paiva has been a beta tester for both versions, and he is now using this light for most of his light painting work. Good enough for me.

 

Pixel Stick is a completely different animal. A programable LED wand with an SD slot for uploading your own light "clip art" or patterns is designed for those who practice Light Drawing. It's currently in development and the Kickstarter campaign has raised an incredible half a million dollars- five times their original goal! I don't do much of this kind of work, but if you do, the Pixel Stick raises the bar a couple of notches. You can pick one up at the introductory price of $300 until December 13 when the Kickstarter is funded. They have not announced the retail price yet.

 

Just a couple of other bits of gear to mention before I conclude. People often ask me for lens recommendations for Night Photography, and I generally advise manual focus wide angle primes, which are very well suited for the job. The problem there is that there are very few primes wide enough to give a true wide angle perspective on APSC or crop sensor cameras.

 

Thankfully, Tokina has come to the rescue with a very affordable, fast ultra-wide zoom lens that is the go to lens for many a Night Photographer. The 18-26mm equivalent Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X116 Pro DX II is only $530? Yes please! Please be aware that this lens is not intended for full frame cameras.

 

 Rokinon lenses have become quite popular recently, and with good reason. With comparable or in some cases better image quality than the Canon or Nikon lenses costing up to $2000 (yes, thousand) more, what have you got to lose? Their 14mm f2.8 lens is a great choice for full frame shooters who want to photograph the Milky Way, or large portions of the night sky, as well as for APSC camera owners who prefer to shoot wide with a fast prime lens. Currently $339 at Amazon.

 

And with that, I wish you felicitations for the midwinter festival of your choosing. I hope that our paths will cross again in the coming year. Thank you for supporting The Night Skye and Lance Keimig Photographics.

 

See you out there under the stars,


Lance  
In This Issue
Workshops and Tours
Night Photography Books
Translations
New Developments
New gear and Gizmos
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