Taking photos in low light can be very rewarding. The beauty of objects only seen at night can create moving and inspirational images. This course will concentrate on how to image in a myriad of low-light situations, long exposures, light trails, light painting, and more. We will also discuss the tools needed to plan that "perfect nightscape shot" such as a moonrise over the Statue of Liberty. We will cover composition at night, image planning, execution, and post-processing. In the second half of the course, we will dive into a subspecialty of night photography, astrophotography. In this portion of the course, we will focus on photographing heavenly bodies (planets, the moon, comets, and even the international space station), Milky Way (very wide field), nebulas (wide field), and galaxies (narrow field). We will discuss the tools needed for each type of heavenly body, camera types, lens choices, specialty filters, and other needed tools such as equatorial mounts, telescope choices, and methods for post-processing these complex and complicated images.We will go over shot planning, equipment, in-camera, and post-processing. Techniques like how to focus at night, getting the correct exposure, and how to light paint the foreground to enhance your shot's quality.
Who should take this course: The course is tilted towards the introductory level for photographers who are new to night and astrophotography. Though there will be many advanced topics covered, we will go at a pace for those who have little to no experience with night photography. With regards to astrophotography, we will go over at the introductory level for everyone. If you know how to get images of galaxies, planets, and nebulae already, you may be too experienced for this course.Course Items: For this course, as it will be taught on Zoom, a means of taking notes is all that is needed. The presentation (PPT) and example images will be supplied for all class participants. We will not be imaging during this course.
Items to Bring:
- Nothing should be needed other than a means to take notes.