Law School Fountain at Night....

A few weeks ago I took a picture of the Grace Mewborn Aycock fountain out front of UNC Law at night. Folks seemed to really like the photo, so here's how I did it.

I wasn't using any sort of crazy camera or equipment, just a point and shoot and a small tripod. My camera is a Canon A85 that's a couple years old and out of date by some respects. But I like that it takes AA batteries instead of some fancy lithium type I can't find anywhere. It also takes the same type of big, old-fashioned digital memory card that my bigger SLR cameras used when I was doing photojournalism, which added a little redundancy to my camera gear.

Anyway, I was scoping out how to get a good shot, took some that really weren't all that great, and then finally nosed into an angle I liked. I put the camera on a small tripod I have (you can get them at photo stores and some office supply places... they collapse down to only about six inches long -- small enough to fit in a camera bag).

While my camera is a point and shoot, you can also set it manually. So for this shot I used a very lng shutter, say 10 seconds or so, and set the timer as well. This gives the camera a few seconds to stop vibrating after I've squeezed the shutter.

And I didn't use any flash. Not that flash is bad -- sometimes it is very useful. But there are a lot of times when you may want to avoid it. For one thing, while flash illuminates your subject, it also portrays your position. There are times at a crime scene with a gunman on the loose when you want to get the picture without being as, umm, findable.

I personally like to use the blue and red lights of the emergency vehicles to light the scene -- I almost feel guilty making something beautiful out of red firetruck lights shining through the smoke of a personal tragedy.

And sometimes you're at something where you don't want to disturb folks with a bright flash popping at a nighttime event, such as at a passion play. Here, I shot into the light, blocked by the cross, to create the outlining effect, using a fast shutter to catch the sharpness and contrast of the image.



In total, I don't enjoy using flash all that much. Maybe it's partly that I've never really learned how to use it well, but it sometimes seems brutish -- like painting with a mop. I prefer to let the light flow as it wishes, and just make sure I'm in the right place to enjoy the show....