Tag Archives: Magic Hour

Paris Countdown: Five Days!

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It won’t be long now.  My camera gear is ready to go, the research is done, and our travel documents have been checked and checked again.  But there is still time for another retrospective of previous visits.

Paris is often called the City of Light or “La Ville-Lumière.” The origin of this term has several competing theories, but we photographers know that the real reason is what happens after sunset.  The Parisians know how to illuminate their city.   According to Elaine Sciolino, in a 2006 New York Times article, considerable resources are dedicated to lighting the monuments, buildings, and bridges of Paris.  There is an entire lighting division in City Hall responsible for choosing the design, style, color, intensity, and timing of the lighting for  some 300 structures within the city’s 40 square miles.

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Twilight, Institut de France from the Right Bank

The image above shows the Institut de France with the Pont des Arts, a pedestrian bridge, on the left.  The bridge links the Institut with the central court of the Louvre Museum.

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Twilight, Pont Neuf, from the Right Bank

Pont Neuf, a short walk away, is another example.  This was taken about five minutes earlier than the image of the Institut de France  This is the oldest bridge across the Seine today.  Construction started in the 16th century and it was the first bridge not lined with houses on both sides.

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 Sacre-Coeur at Night

 A few days later, I was on the rooftop terrace of Printemps (64 Blvd. Haussman),  and captured this scene of the Sacre-Coeur Basilica located on Montmarte Hill.

If all goes well, I should find a few more opportunities to photograph the La Nuit en Paris.   And, as in my previous post on Paris, I welcome any suggestions for subjects and/or locations. I’ve had several interesting suggestions already.  Just use the Comments option to send them.

It was a dark and Stormy Night…

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Wind, clouds, and nightfall.  Not the usual descriptors for perfect photographic conditions, but in the right circumstances,   these conditions can produce dramatic images.  As suggested in my last post, the Navy and Merchant Marine Memorial seemed to have potential for nighttime photography.  And so, here are a few examples of my first attempts.

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Sunset plus 15 Minutes (Note Washington Monument under leading gull)

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It was a good plan, but….

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One of my least favorite clichés is the advice that when given lemons, you should make lemonade.  I hear it a lot when I grumble to someone about unexpected complications that ruined a plan for a specific image.  That’s all well and good (at least you have something), but you still didn’t get what you really wanted.  I don’t dismiss this advice; you should always try to make the best of any given situation.  But many years ago a photographer gave me what I think is far better advice and that was “Keep Showing Up.”

Those who read my post of 9 March already know that this is the time of year to capture a perfect solar alignment with the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.  And so for the past five days I have been showing up n front of the Memorial about 30 minutes before sunrise.  What follows is a tale of following two guiding principles: making lemonade and being persistent.

The forecast for 20 March, the actual day of the vernal equinox, was for clear skies, exactly the conditions required for the image I was after.  But I awoke at 5:30 AM to find a dense fog so thick you couldn’t see half of the Washington Monument.

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and it was obvious that my chances were slim.  So I set about making lemonade.  I’ve learned you often can get the twilight blue color (see my post about Magic Hour) with cloudy weather just as you can with clear skies.  The lighting system of the Lincoln Memorial is very well balanced for this time of day.

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The artificial lamps enhance the architectural features of the building and there is just enough ambient light 20 minutes before sunrise to provide detail in the unlit surroundings.  For about 3-4 minutes, the Memorial looks like a shining jewel box set against a brilliant blue background.  The above image was shot at 6:48 AM about 24 minutes before sunrise.

The next day there was a heavy cloud cover and again things look unpromising.  But clouds can often bring drama to an

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otherwise ordinary image.  So I waited a little longer than I had the previous day in order to get greater detail on the clouds but still retain the special quality of the lighting system working its magic on the exterior and interior of the Memorial.  The above image was photographed at 6:55 AM, about 17 minutes before sunrise.

I should add that aside from weather problems, each day featured an interesting cast of characters that affected my opportunities for shooting.  It surprises most people to learn that the Lincoln Memorial is a very popular place in the early morning.  Most common is the exercise crowd.  The two most impressive in this group were the squad of soldiers in full camouflage and full equipment packs doing laps around the Reflection Pool and a trio of very fit young women who ran up and down the steps of the Memorial for about an hour with only occasional breaks for some stretching exercises.

But I digress.  On the third day the clouds were still with me and I had little choice but to make more lemonade.  At least it had been relatively warm all three days.  I decided to try my luck inside the building since I had very little of that kind of lemonade in my stock inventory.  I found a nice location on the north side of the statue that made it possible to include the key part of the statue, all of

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the dedication text above the statue, and the complete Gettysburg speech on the south wall in the background.  It may be hard to read in this version but when it is fully enlarged to about 30” X 36” the engraved writing is easy to read.  (Technical note: this image is actually 4 separate images merged together into a single image, taken at 7:18 AM, about 7 minutes after sunrise.)  I think this is the best batch of lemonade of the week.

Having already disproved the old adage that the “Third Time is the Charm” I ventured out again on Sunday morning, encouraged by the small break in the clouds to the east.  But it was more likely that the best angle this day would be to point the camera toward the Washington Monument.  A mix of clouds and open sky in the east can often bring spectacular sunrises and I thought I would try a different angle, suggested by a fellow photographer on the first day.

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If we insist on sticking with the lemonade analogy, the above image is probably Grade B, but the drawbacks (scaffolding on the Washington Monument, an near-empty Reflection Pool, and a construction crane over the new Museum of African American History) do provide some contextual interest.

So, this morning (March 24) was Day number 5 and if you have read this far, you are probably praying for a happy ending (or any kind of ending).  The forecast called for a sharp drop in temperature, some wind (ugh!) and clear skies.  And they were spot on.  The sequence of pictures below show what happened over a 5-minute period.  So it would appear that both pieces of advice were correct.  When conditions didn’t favor the plan, I was able to capture some images I would otherwise not have gotten.  And by the fact that I kept showing up, I also got the image I was after.

looking west at 7:10:38 AM Sun is partially visible just to north of Washington Monument

looking west at 7:10:38 AM Sun is partially visible just to north of Washington Monument which is behind the camera.

7:14:23 AM Sun is barely visible just to south of Washington Monument

7:14:23 AM Sun is barely visible just to south of Washington Monument

7:18:00 AM Sun is almost completely visible on south side of Washington Monument

7:18:00 AM Sun is almost completely visible on south side of Washington Monument

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7:19:17 AM

Perfect Solar Alignment

 

My First Moon Shot

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                When photographing a rising full moon one needs to know two things: when will it come up and where will it come up.  The first question is easy enough; you can find moonrise data in most newspapers, usually in the weather section.  But the “where” question is a little tricky, especially if you want it in a specific location in the composition.  The reason is that the lunar cycle is about 18.6 years, so a perfect alignment such as the image below won’t happen again for a very long time.  This is particularly important when you wish to capture the moon right next to, or just above, a specific architectural element in an urban environment.  You don’t have a lot of time to get to the exact spot because the moon’s location changes quickly as the earth rotates.  So you need to be set up and ready to go before the moon appears.  Fortunately, this is much easier to do today than just a few years ago thanks to things like smart phone, tablets, and “apps” such as The Photographer’s Ephemeris.

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                Even with all of these advantages, one still has to deal with the fact of the moon’s apparent unpredictability and do a little advance planning.  So I thought it would be useful to go back in time to about 2001, when I started chasing moon shots.  While the tools have changed, the process is still pretty much the same.  Back then, one needed an 800-year old technology known as a compass and a source for astronomical tables such as the US Naval Observatory.  I used both to capture the image above, showing the moon next to the Lincoln Memorial just as it broke the horizon.  The photograph was made on March 9, 2001, so a few days before that I consulted the US Naval Observatory’s website and determined that the moon would rise at 6:16 PM, about 7 minutes after sunset.  The timing between sunset and moonrise is important because if the sun hasn’t already set, the moon will be washed out.  (A future post will go into that aspect in more detail.)   

                Further, the USNO site showed that the full moon would rise at a compass azimuth reading of 80.9 degrees.  We all know that the direction due east is exactly 90 degrees on a compass so the moon would be coming up a little bit to the “left” of due east. But something a little more precise would be needed because in this case, one could in a position where the moon was coming up behind the Lincoln Memorial and it would not be visible until it was too late.  An accurate compass can provide that precision as shown in the graphic below.  So on the day of the moonrise, I drove down the George Washington Parkway and parked in the lot for Theodore Roosevelt Island about 45 minutes before sunset.  From there it was a short hike down the Mount Vernon Trail to a point several hundred yards north of the Memorial Bridge.  I used the compass to find a location where it was exactly 81 degrees from where I was standing to the spot where I wanted the moon to be—just to the left of the Lincoln Memorial.   I set up my tripod and camera, attached the cable release and began to wait.  I was the only photographer there.

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                It is at this point where you have done everything you can to be in the right place at the right time.  The rest is basically luck and is the element that makes these moments so special…or not.   Will the sky be overcast?   Will a small cloud obscure the moon at the critical moment?  But on this night everything worked out well:  the twilight blue of the evening sky, the dark orange glow of the moon as a result of perfect atmospheric conditions, and a small pink cloud from the setting sun nicely positioned directly above the Lincoln Memorial. 

          Since then, I have attempted many more moon shots around the city, sometimes with success.  Here are a few more from the early years:

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               Moonrise, from Memorial Bridge, January 28, 2002

          In this case, the moon came up on an azimuth of 62 degrees, much farther north than the March 9 2001. From the shooting location, it would have risen right behind the Lincoln Memorial so I had to wait for a while before it got to this point.

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Waxing moon and Capitol Dome, October 8, 2003

Again, this was taken well after the time the moon first broke the horizon, but I wanted to place it next to the dome.  This was taken two days before the full moon.  In all three of these shots, I was using a Nikon F-100 and shooting with Ektachrome 100 VS transparency film.