Firstly, I would like to thank Wendy @farmreporter for organizing the last b&w challenge and for trialling a new voting technique. If you had concerns with the method used could you please post to this thread to allow for discussion. If there are no concerns I would like to continue with the method introduced by Wendy.
Next – I find it truly amazing and awesome that I have won this challenge!! Amazing because just a few months ago I hadn’t even heard of the terms Low key and High Key. And Awesome because of the incredible help and support and advice that I have received from many members of the 365 community – thank you all so much!
However, this means that I am now fairly well out of my depth trying to decide on a possible topic for this challenge…..
Sooo - I thought it might be interesting to try one of techniques I have tried (with very mixed success!!) and see how it adapts to b&w. Hopefully this will also give both new and experienced photographers a chance to either improve or display their skills.
Soooo again --- the topic for the black and white challenge18 is “longer/long exposure”, with any resultant image being suitable for entry eg images showing any type of movement, images produced by panning, images resulting from ICM – including any abstract images produced in this way. They just have to be in Black and White!
Start of the challenge: 28/8/2017
Finish of the challenge: 18/9/2017
Tag for the challenge: bw-18 (Please note that there is no"&" in the tag!!!)
Rules for the challenge: Photos must be taken and posted within the timeframe of the challenge.
P.S. Please indicate in your commentary whether you are new to this process or experienced with it.
I have tried to find some resources which may be helpful:
And lastly – it would be great if you could post some of your images to this post as well as putting it on the tag page. It will give us inspiration!!
Cheers – looking forward to seeing your creations. Rob Z
Previous topics are:
Low key
High contrast
Architecture
Glassware
Body parts
Festivities
Faces
Landscape
Patterns
Still life
Reflections
Movement
Seasons
Silhouettes
High key
Fashion
Technology
I know this is obviously an image of fireworks - but I thought it was interesting. My camera is a Canon Powershot SX62. It has no way for you to alter the exposure time manually. It does however, have lots of preset programs to play with. This was taken with the "fireworks" setting - and gave an exposure time of 2 secs. This might be one way to "trick" a point and shoot into taken a longer exposure shot? Maybe only at night?
@robz I'm not sure, as I do not have your camera, but in the Specific Scenes Mode you should have a Long shutter Option where you can choose between 1-15 seconds. It's the last one with moon and stars symbol. Have fun, great choice by the way, and I might give it a try.
@mona65 Hi Mona - thanks for the tip!! I'll have a look right now! You are quite right!! I had tried that early in the piece - so early that I didn't realize that 1 " was 1 second!! OK!! - can really play now! ( far too many exclamation marks here - must be very excited) Thank you so much. It would be nice if you felt like having a go - always good to see other people's creations. Cheers Rob
@vincent24 Hi Vincent. Thank you for your nice comment. I didn't use a tripod - this was at the Bisbane EKKA - full on fun all day with just my little camera in my pocket. Good thing it knew what it was doing - I had no idea - it truly was just a "point and shoot" situation. It took great shots - all of them seemed to be 2 secs when I checked them later. I did edit this one for the b&w challenge. Thanks so much for having a look. It would be great if you felt like entering an image or two. Cheers Rob Z
great choice of technique for the challenge
as for the voting option - I didn't have a problem as a voter but could find it quite time consuming as a selector - I think choosing finalists and the way to present them can be left up to whoever is doing it :)
@annied Thanks for your response Annie. I'm so pleased you think the choice for the challenge was OK - it was a bit daunting!! And thanks for your input about the voting - I just wanted to be sure that most people were OK with me using Wendy's method again. I didn't want to impose it an everybody forever.. LOL- I don't think I'd be very popular with the people who host lots of these things! Thanks again for answering. Cheers
This concept is proving very tricky! Especially with my camera which is a "point and shoot" which does allow for various settings. However, the "long exposure" setting which allows you to program up to 15secs (thank you again Mona for that tip!!) doesn't allow you to dial in an exposure bias and seems to result in very bright highlights. Might try tricking it into giving a longer exposure by using the P settings and modifying the exposue bias....
Anyway - thought I'd post the first effort just to keep the thread alive .... If you would like to see some much!!! better shots please check out the tag bw-18
This is great, Rob! So good for you to dig up some tutorials for us! While I have done some panning I have not really done any real long exposure shots. Looking forward to seeing what i can come up with.
@farmreporter Thanks Wendy for your encouragement! If this is tricky (which it seems to be!!) - then the panning looked really difficult! I don't know how useful the sites will be - a lot of it went over my head... but I'll look forward to seeing your results. Cheers :)
@robz
Everyone thinks panning is difficult but it is really a piece of cake. All you do is set your camera shutter speed fairly slow and follow the motion of the person / object in your viewfinder and snap the photo. (and hope for the best - lol!)
But the beauty of digital is if you can set your camera to continuous you can snap a dozen pics while following the person in your viewfinder - pick the best photo and delete the rest.
@farmreporter You make that sound positively easy Wendy LOL. No seriously - it doesn't sound that bad - and my camera will do the continuous shots so it is definitely worth a go. Thanks for the outline!! Cheers :)
@robz Just got to checking out the references you put here..thank you so much...(the last is a bit daunting, but I will, I promise myself, get to read it in full. And I do like this challenge.
by the way, panning...I find it a bit trickier than Wendy; for me the difficulty is panning at the same speed as the moving object, so I started with objects that first I could control i.e:. my moving hand;; moved on to objects with a steady and predictable speed i.e. a carousel; then on to some more challenging: i.e a bike rider on a park path; than a car...you get the idea...I was ok with those but horses at a rodeo..not so much! lol. But have fun..Now I'm off to figure out some more long exposures (on the point & shoot) and on the dslr but without an nd filter....hmmm, we'll see what happens.
@granagringa Thanks for all your feedback and it's nice to hear that some of the online sites are OK. I totally gave up on the last one!
From what you have said about your panning career it would appear that my random play with a bus was doomed to failure LOL. (I did like the abstract it created LOL) Will have to try in a more organized way!!
I had a look at the ND filter data and it would appear that this may have been the cause of the bright red river - no filter. Obviously I can't attach anything to my camera but I thought it might be worth a try with an old polaroid sun glass lens held in front of my camera - just need 3 hands... Looking forward to seeing your images!! Cheers Rob
@annied Hi Annie -This has worked so well. And it looks good in the b&w too - such nice contrasts between the shades.You must be really pleased with it! Thanks so much for posting it here - and for entering it in the challenge.
I know this is not b&w and it's not even very good - but I thought I would put it here as encouragement to beginners like me - it's the first panning experiment of mine that has almost worked!!! (No good in b&w though) It seems this would be much easier if the screen let you see what was happening rather than blacking out!! LOL
Tweets ahoy!
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as for the voting option - I didn't have a problem as a voter but could find it quite time consuming as a selector - I think choosing finalists and the way to present them can be left up to whoever is doing it :)
Anyway - thought I'd post the first effort just to keep the thread alive .... If you would like to see some much!!! better shots please check out the tag bw-18
Everyone thinks panning is difficult but it is really a piece of cake. All you do is set your camera shutter speed fairly slow and follow the motion of the person / object in your viewfinder and snap the photo. (and hope for the best - lol!)
But the beauty of digital is if you can set your camera to continuous you can snap a dozen pics while following the person in your viewfinder - pick the best photo and delete the rest.
by the way, panning...I find it a bit trickier than Wendy; for me the difficulty is panning at the same speed as the moving object, so I started with objects that first I could control i.e:. my moving hand;; moved on to objects with a steady and predictable speed i.e. a carousel; then on to some more challenging: i.e a bike rider on a park path; than a car...you get the idea...I was ok with those but horses at a rodeo..not so much! lol. But have fun..Now I'm off to figure out some more long exposures (on the point & shoot) and on the dslr but without an nd filter....hmmm, we'll see what happens.
From what you have said about your panning career it would appear that my random play with a bus was doomed to failure LOL. (I did like the abstract it created LOL) Will have to try in a more organized way!!
I had a look at the ND filter data and it would appear that this may have been the cause of the bright red river - no filter. Obviously I can't attach anything to my camera but I thought it might be worth a try with an old polaroid sun glass lens held in front of my camera - just need 3 hands... Looking forward to seeing your images!! Cheers Rob