Twinkling Lights

The holiday season truly is a magical time of year to visit New York City. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more festive city between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve (though I don’t recommend ambling anywhere near Times Square on December 31st). The most famous displays are in store windows along Fifth Avenue in Midtown, and the centerpiece is of course the tree-helmed ice rink at Rockefeller Center. There are many more commercial displays throughout the city, but some of my favorites to photograph are the ones put up by resident New Yorkers outside their homes. Manhattan doesn’t have the space for giant lawn fixtures, but that doesn’t stop it from having truly elegant Christmas decorations in many neighborhoods.

The Upper East Side of Manhattan has some of the most elegant displays in front of beautiful townhouses.

Photographing holiday lights is a simple task for most: the display is a stationary subject you can easily capture with a phone camera. But producing a high quality image is trickier than you might think. My first step is to find the right subjects — generally I find the Upper East Side of Manhattan to have the best residential holiday displays in the city. (If you want a more extravagant but suburban display visit the Dyker Heights neighborhood in southern Brooklyn — it is famous for its Christmas decorations.)

Another beautiful Upper East Side display.

I recommend a wide angle lens (mine is a tilt-shift 17mm) on a full frame camera. One challenge is that most streets in New York are lined with parked cars, so photographing from across the street means you’ll have a row of ugly vehicles in your shot). There isn’t much alternative to setting up on the narrow sidewalk right in front of your subject, or just off to one side — thus the need for a wide angle point of view.

I’ve seen photographers shoot in daylight, but holiday lights often are not switched on until dusk. I prefer evening and nighttime images. Since we’re relying on artificial but ambient light from the displays, streetlights, or home lighting, we require a relatively long exposure: anywhere from half a second up to 30 seconds. A tripod is a must with these long shutter speeds.

My favorite technique is to “stop down” or tighten the aperture to a narrow range, usually f/16. Narrow apertures on wide angle lenses produce brilliant “starburst” renderings of bright lights by effectively forcing the camera to “squint”. This creates a twinkling of the lights for an added magical touch to the subject matter. 

The tradeoff to a narrow aperture is that it increases the required exposure time and potentially the ISO.

“Twinkling” lights or starburst effects are achieved by stopping-down (i.e. narrowing) the aperture to f/16 or less.

While a 25-or 30-second exposure is not a problem for a tripod-mounted camera, if there is even a trace of wind it will cause motion blur on any moving elements in the image (tree branches, or loose hanging ornaments.). Therefore it’s best to shoot on calm evenings with low wind. You can increase the ISO to help bring down the exposure time, just remember that higher ISO produces more noise and reduces image quality.

Lastly, exposure for holiday lights can be tricky. I typically underexpose my image by about two-thirds stop or even a full stop to avoid blowing out the bright highlights. In post processing, I raise the shadows and increase exposure to bring out the background and low-lit areas. I also apply vignetting and selective dodging and burning to draw the eye toward the subject. For a dreamy look I sometimes apply a minor Orton effect. Lastly, I use a selective color filter to tilt the greens toward the cool side — think blue fir tree — for a more wintry look.

Use a selective color filter to tilt the greens toward the cool side for a more wintry look.

The Shot: Railroad Village

The Shot: Railroad Village
Location: Taiwan
Techniques: Hand-held shooting, shutter speed, weather
Recommended knowledge: Understand the exposure triangle. Manual mode: setting your camera’s aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. 

The final shot. The historic town of Shifen is about a 40-minute drive from Taipei

If you bring your camera with you in your travels - whether it’s an overseas vacation or a day trip to a local park - it’s likely that you’ll be without your tripod for at least some of the time. Sometimes it’s not feasible to carry a tripod, especially in a place where it’s simply not permitted to do so (museums, churches, etc.). Or maybe you’ll opt to leave the tripod at home and lighten your load. Street photographers work almost exclusively without tripods, as do many photojournalists and some portrait photographers. Even if you’re a landscape photographer with unshakeable allegiance to the three-legged stabilizer, hand-held shooting is an important skill to learn for those unplanned moments when a tripod isn’t set up or available. 

FORM

The two most important technical considerations in hand-held photography are form and camera settings. In general, you’ll want to hold the camera with two hands and keep your elbows tucked in. The idea is to keep the camera stabilized with your body, effectively weighing it down. You’ve probably seen photographers hold the camera in one extended hand, using the display screen to focus, as they rattle off a bunch of shots. This is about looking cool while taking pictures but does nothing to improve the photo, and for most people will lead to poor results. If you are a portrait photographer using flash and fast shutter speed you could use this technique to look slick, and possibly to put your subjects at ease with a more easy-going posture, but for environmental shots using natural light I’d recommend going old-school: use two hands, look through the view finder, and hold a tight (but relaxed), stable stance. You won’t look as cool taking the photo, but you’ll get the better shot.  

HAND-HELD RULE

You might know the rule of thumb to use a minimum shutter speed of 1 over the focal length. For example, if you’re shooting with a 50mm lens (on a full frame camera such as a Canon 5DSR), a shutter speed of 1/50 is the slowest recommended speed for a reasonably sharp photograph. (If you’re using a crop frame camera you need to first factor in how the crop factor affects focal length. For example a Canon 7D Mark II or a Canon Rebel T7i both have a crop factor of 1.6 which effectively magnifies the image by that amount. So a 50mm lens becomes 80mm - i.e. 50 x 1.6 = 80. In this case the minimum shutter speed is 1/80. Ok, no more math, I promise!) Let’s look at an example and see how this works in practice. We’ll assume that we do not want any creative blur and would like the photo sharp throughout. 

Our location is the former mining town of Shifen, Taiwan. A slow moving train passes right through the center of the village, as it has for nearly 100 years, but these days it is carrying tourists, not coal. We’re using a Canon EF 24-70mm lens, which is my primary workhorse lens for travel photography.  We’ll use a focal length of 70mm for an image of the train passing through the colorful main street - it’s safest to keep some distance from the tracks and zoom in. Notably, this lens does not have built-in image stabilization, so it’s a good test of the hand-held rule. Based on the focal length of 70mm, our shutter speed is 1/80 (the nearest increment to 1/70), and it produces a decent image. If we zoom in however, many parts of the image are soft, and the moving train is outright blurry. No amount of post-process sharpening will make this image usable in any reasonably large size. The best we can do is process this image for low resolution use, such as Instagram (or a photography blog!)

Our first attempt might be Insta-ready but it won’t cut it for a larger size image. The train simply is not sharp (our desired look), nor does it have much motion blur (an alternative look). It's neither here nor there. (Aperture: f/8.0, Shutter: 1/80, ISO: 320)

Luckily, we’re going to get another crack at it, because the train that just passed through town is going back in the opposite direction shortly. This time we are going to increase the shutter speed to 1/320. The shorter exposure requires us to let in more light, but we don’t want to widen the aperture because this will create too shallow a depth of field. Instead, we’ll meter the scene and take a few test shots with a higher ISO while waiting for the train to return. And here’s what’s key: 1) if you have time, take a few test shots to get the exposure right before the scene unfolds. 2) Don’t force a low ISO shot at the expense of sharpness. It’s true that higher ISO introduces more noise, but today’s cameras produce clean images at higher ISO and there’s always the possibility to reduce noise in post-processing. In this instance a low ISO 100 shot requires either too slow a shutter speed or too wide an aperture for this scene… so we’ll go with ISO 1000, f/8 and shutter 1/320.  

PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE RAIN

We’ve got some other challenges too. It is raining and we need to keep our lens dry. You should always keep a UV filter on to protect the lens when shooting hand-held except in very specific situations. A lens hood is very effective in all but the heaviest rain. If you’ve got a weather sealed camera and lens, light rain or snow won’t be a problem, but it’s still a good idea to keep your gear dry. Buy a lens coat and if you don’t have one, improvise: a plastic bag will help in a pinch. 

Now let’s look at the result. Much sharper! You can easily read the numbers on the train.

This is a crop of the train magnified to 200%. (Aperture: f/8.0, Shutter: 1/320, ISO: 1000) Minor noise-reduction was applied using Topaz DeNoise.

It turns out the hand-held rule is a guideline, not a prescription. There are many factors which would require you to keep a faster shutter speed than 1 over the focal length. Let’s review some of them:

• Camera Shake Part I: Note whether your lens includes image stabilization. If it does not, increase your minimum shutter speed.

• Camera Shake Part II: Consider your technical ability. Are you experienced shooting hand-held and have you practiced the skill recently? Bump up your shutter speed if you’re rusty, and feel no shame about it.

• Situational Awareness: Evaluate the shooting situation. Are you calmly waiting for a moment, or did you just run to catch an unfolding scene, and your heart is pounding from the exercise and adrenaline? Can you pull off a stable hand-held shot? In high energy situations, crowded places, or bad weather this is unlikely, and you should raise your minimum shutter speed to compensate.

• Moving Subjects: Visualize the scene. Are you freezing moving subjects, or capturing a still life scene? Even slow moving subjects require a shutter speed greater than the hand-held minimum. Faster subjects need even faster shutter speeds. And remember that stationary subjects are not always still (i.e. trees on a windy day.)

An example of a blown shot. I hand-held a Canon 1DX Mark II with a 600mm lens for this shot (mistake number one - hand-held shots with very long lenses are very difficult to pull off), and thought if I used a shutter speed of 1/1600 that should be plenty fast since the hand-held rule would call for only 1/600 right? Not even close. The eagle’s eyes are not sharp - which makes this shot unusable, except to demonstrate an unusable shot 😀 To get this right, the ideal shutter speed would have been 1/3200. On a tripod and gimbal, with image stabilization, steady hands, and good panning technique, 1/2500 might work. Maybe.

I have missed plenty of opportunities to capture portfolio shots because I underestimated the shutter speed needed for a sharp image. Like any photographic skill, hand-held photography takes practice and is a combination of art and science. Most importantly, go out there and have fun while you learn.

The Shot: The Blizzard Taxi

The Shot: The Blizzard Taxi
Techniques: Panning
Skill Level: Intermediate
Location: New York City
Recommended knowledge: Setting your camera’s aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Changing the autofocus mode and setting autofocus point. Enabling hi-speed or burst mode.

Focal length: 50mm, Aperture: F/2.8, Shutter: 1/40, ISO: 200

Even in depths of winter New York City just does not stop going. With this shot we’ll capture the action of New York in a snowstorm. The obvious subject is a moving taxi, but equally compelling is the falling snow and blustery weather. Shooting this image relies on the panning technique and using shutter speed as an artistic tool. We’ll frame color against a neutral background and washout the canvas with a vignette to further draw the eye to the main part of the image. 

SHUTTER SPEED
If you have a strong understanding of shutter speed feel free to skip this section. If this is new to you or you’d like a refresher, let’s review: the shutter speed of the camera controls how long the shutter is open to allow light to travel in to the camera’s sensor. The longer the shutter speed, the more light enters the frame. If the shutter speed is too fast, not enough light enters and the photo is underexposed; too slow, and the photo will be overexposed. When you photograph a stationary scene, shutter speed affects only the exposure and does not impact the appearance of the subject. 

Shutter speed can also be used to control the appearance of motion in an image. A fast shutter speed will “freeze” motion and appear as a crisp moment in time. With a slow shutter speed, motion will appear more fluid and blurry. In a very long exposure, motion may appear as a trail, or may disappear completely from the frame. All of these shutter speeds have applications in photography depending on the desired effect. In this image, the goal is to capture motion with a moderate blur. If we were to hold the camera stationary (or use a tripod) using a medium shutter speed, the passing taxicab would appear blurry against a sharp background as the camera captures a short distance of motion. However, in this image, using the panning technique we will reverse the effect by capturing the taxicab sharply and blurring our background. This is a popular look in auto racing and sports photography. It’s also common in nature photography, especially for birds in flight. As a bonus, the shutter speed will also blur and illustrate the movement of the falling snow.

PANNING 
Panning is not difficult, but it takes practice and requires an understanding of shutter speed to give the desired results. To illustrate what we will accomplish with panning, let’s use a simple example. Hold a pen or pencil at eye level, about 8-12 inches diagonally in front your right ear. Look straight ahead and take note of what is in the background (it could be a wall in your home). Now continue to look straight at the background ahead and move the pen across from right to left so that it stops 8-12 inches diagonally in front of your left ear. The entire motion should take 1 to 2 seconds. Notice that the pen appears blurry and the background remains sharp. This is what a medium shutter speed would capture when the camera is stationary - for example a camera on a tripod as a taxi cab passes from right to left.  (If you find that the pen was sharp and the background was blurry you’ve unknowingly used the panning technique. Let’s try it officially now.)

The traditional use of shutter speed to create motion blur. In this image, the camera is stationary on a tripod, keeping our background still while blurring moving subjects. In panning, the opposite effect is achieved. I used a tilt-shift lens in this shot, but any lens can achieve motion blur at the right shutter speed.
Focal length: 24mm, Aperture: F/14, Shutter: 1/15, ISO: 100

Now we are going to reverse the effect. Hold the pen at a diagonal 8-12 inches from your right ear at eye level. This time, turn your head to the right so that you are looking directly at the pen. Move the pen from right to left, just as before but this time follow the pen by turning your head at the same speed so that you are always looking straight at the pen as it moves. Notice the pen remains in focus as the background appears blurry throughout the movement. We apply this effect to our photo by moving our eyes (camera) with the the subject (taxi). 

Panning works most effectively when a subject is moving perpendicular to your frame of reference (i.e. side to side). What is the optimal shutter speed to achieve this effect? The answer really depends on two things: the focal length and the speed of the subject. Both of these factors affect how quickly motion appears in frame. To keep it simple, lets assume a focal length of 35mm on a full frame camera. A shutter speed between 1/30 and 1/125 generally works for passing cars, bikes, etc. In this photo the taxi is driving relatively slowly (as one should in a blizzard!); I used a Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L II lens with a focal length of 50mm and shutter speed 1/40. As a bonus, the taxi is driving upwind and in the opposite direction of the falling snow. This adds an enhanced sense of movement to the image.

The easiest way to practice panning is to stand on a sidewalk and photograph passing cars. If your camera supports burst mode or hi-speed shooting you should enable this setting. Select Shutter Priority or Manual mode and start with a shutter speed of 1/60. Hold your camera at eye level and tuck your elbows in against your sides. (You can also use a tripod and panning head, but I suggest learning to do this hand-held). As a car approaches from the side, turn your entire torso toward the car, focus, and begin turning your core as the car passes. Practice turning your body at a speed so that the car remains in the same part of the frame throughout. Do this a few times before taking any shots. When you are ready, pan and hold down your shutter button to take multiple shots as a car passes. Be sure to press your shutter button before the subject is directly in front of you - you'll miss the shot if you wait until the subject is in front of you to begin shooting. The goal is to have the car in focus and the background blurry. If both appear relatively sharp, your shutter speed is too fast. If both are blurry your shutter speed may be too slow. If the car’s position in the frame is inconsistent, you need to fine tune the speed at which you're  turning. Panning is a complex technique that will take practice, so don’t be discouraged if it takes a while. One final note of caution: always pick a safe place from which to attempt this technique. Do not stand in the street and always be aware of your surroundings! 

Want to learn more about motion blur? Check out these 10 Great Tips to Capture Unique Motion Blur Photos.

FOCUS
On my Canon 5D Mark III you have three options: One Shot, AI Focus, and AI Servo. Comparable Nikon models have similar modes. If you are panning against a busy background, using Servo mode will be effective if you lock focus on the moving vehicle properly. I often use One Shot mode and have no problem. The key is to not enable all focus points. Doing so could cause the camera to lock focus on another moving object and not your preferred subject. Limit the autofocus to no more than a few points surrounding the center of the frame.

Limit your autofocus to the points in the center of the frame. Enabling more focus points could confuse the camera's autofocus and lock onto the wrong subject, especially in an action scene. (Image courtesy: Canon USA)

COMPOSITION
Whenever you capture motion, the framing of the subject should help to accentuate the movement. In practical terms, you should leave room in front of and behind the subject to imply movement, sometimes with visible cues like a wake or a dust cloud. (Think of cartoons and how they suggest movement). Generally you should leave more room in front of the subject than behind to imply forward movement. 

POST-PROCESSING
In post-processing I applied two effects to achieve the final look. First, I applied a polarization filter (using Nik Collection Polarization) to make the yellows and blues pop. Second, I added a vignette to draw the eye to the center of the frame. Vignettes can be created in a number of ways and normally they darken the corners of the image, however in this instance I used a curves adjustment layer in Photoshop to lighten the corners and reduce contrast. I limited the effect to the perimeter of the image, creating a fade into the whiteout of the snow storm. 

OTHER SUBJECTS
Panning can be used to capture motion on almost any moving subject but requires certain qualities in the movement:

1. The subject should be moving perpendicular to you - i.e left-right or right-left

2. The subject should be moving continuously and smoothly

Practice and have fun! Try the panning technique in these situations:

• A cyclist at the park

• A seagull at the beach

• A motorcycle or car on the street

• A runner in a race

• A waverunner or water-skier at a lake

Panning technique in Taipei, Taiwan. Scooters are so popular in this city, they are often seen driving in “swarms” or parked by the dozens.
Focal length: 70mm, Aperture: F/2.8, Shutter: 1/200, ISO: 250