While organising our holiday pictures I thought how now nice it would be to learn more about photography. I’ve been creating pictures for quite some time now, including a DSLR for about 15 years. But I still find myself fumbling in certain situations. While googling for workshops, most of them are about digitally enhancing your pictures, or very introductory. Until I came across kijk en zie fotoschool. This site also offers an advanced course, perhaps intereseting for me as well? Renate suggested that I’d do a workshop night photography first and see how it will evolve…
And the workshop was on the 9th of september. We assembled near the train station at Den Bosch and were met by Joris. Once the group was complete, we went to the first location where we received some information about night photography. Some things I learned that night were:
- Watch out with the white balance. During and after the famous “blue hour”, the image can overshade with blue. If you don’t take photo’s in RAW (where you can adjust afterwards), change it while taking pictures. Some values: (3200 = evening/night, 5200 = daylight and 6700 = cloudy)
- Use a diafragma of f/7 – f/8 for buildings, f/10 – f/11 for subjects with more lighting around it. And of course with a tripod and ISO 100
- I noticed that my Nikon D7000 is quite sensitive on the autofocus. Even while manually focussing (using live view), when I changed back to the viewfinder, I saw that the camera was usually able to focus as well (good validation for my skills)
You have to practice the manual focus part, but once you get the hang of it, it’s getting easier. After the first location, we went to two other sites. It has been a great evening, learning some new stuff and I started watching evenings / darkness with a different set of eyes. Always looking out where to find sites for great night photography pictures.
And last but not least, the result of the workshop.