Colored lights on London buildings at night make for some interesting scenes.

Tags:   London Low light photography night photography James Neeley

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It was a moonless night so I decided to test out the low light capabilities of the D700. From what I read the D700/D3 has the lowest high ISO noise of any camera available and I was not disappointed in it's performance! I have even noticed lower noise at ISO 200 when really stretching the image such as doing HDR. Thank you Nikon!

This is a view of the Milky Way and Grand Teton over Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park. The exposure is 30 sec. at f2.8 and ISO 6400. The sky glow to the left (south) is from Jackson Hole and to the right is from Driggs, Idaho on the other side of the Tetons.

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Tags:   Tetons Grand Tetons Grand Teton National Park GTNP starlight Milky Way Astrophotography James Neeley lowlight Nikon D700 Jenny Lake Night Photography explore front page EISF2009 mywinners flickr12

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The Owachomo Bridge is located in Natural Bridges National Monument west of Blanding, Utah. I saw this bridge in a National Geographic article "The End of Night" Nov. 2008, p.102 and thought I have to give it a try. While I was scouting Moab I decided to take the 2 hr. drive to this location and lose another nights sleep!

You can view the National Geographic photo here.

A quote from the article...A starry night gleams above Owachomo Bridge in Utah's Natural Bridges National Monument—named the first Dark Sky Park by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). "Here you see something forgotten," says ranger Scott Ryan, "and reconnect with the sky."

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For this image, I used a 30 sec. exposure at f3.5 and ISO 6400. The light on the bridge is indirect light painting. During the exposure I pointed a flashlight behind me reflecting off of the rocks and trees. This produced a much more even light than when I would shine the flash light quickly across the bridge..

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Tags:   Utah Owachomo Bridge Natural Bridges National Monument starry night Dark-sky Night Photography Milkyway James Neeley D700 Nikon landscape nature stars EISF2009 mywinners

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This image is of the "Garden of Eden" section of Arches National Park. The two pillars are called "Adam and Eve." The image was taken at 3:30 am and I initially thought the bright object on the left was Venus and the sky glow from the sun. This didn't make sense however since the sunrise wasn't for 2.5 hours!

When I got home I used an astronomy program to map the objects (see my comment inside).

This image is a 30 sec. shot at f2.8 and ISO 3200. I was amazed at the lack of noise at this relatively high ISO. I did a little indirect light painting with my flashlight to lighten the foreground.

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Tags:   Arches National Park Arches Moab James Neeley landscape Utah Garden of Eden Adam and Eve Night Photography Low Light Photography Nikon D700 VosPlusBellesPhotos flickr12

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It was an enjoyable day of smiles, noise, marching, flags, family, and cheers as we celebrated the Fourth of July in Idaho Falls. The fireworks, reflected in the Snake River, were great as always!

A note about technique - A common mistake people make in photographing fireworks is to over expose the image thus robbing the fireworks of their color. Even though this is night photography, the individual points of light from the fireworks are very bright so don't set your ISO too high or your aperture too low. For this image I used ISO 200 and f22 to bring out the color and keep the fireworks from "blowing out." To capture enough ambient light the exposure was stretched to 15 seconds.

This logic is very similar to flash photography where you would use your ISO and aperture to correctly expose the flash. Shutter speed, which does not affect the light from the flash, is used to control the ambient light.

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Tags:   Idaho Idaho Falls Fireworks Fourth of July 4th of July 4th Night Photography James Neeley F12

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