 BetterPhoto Member |
night time tricks What kind of cool stuff can I do with a 35mm SLR at night with 400 speed b&w film. I need this for a graduation project for school.
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John A. Lind |
Tim, Yours is a *very* open-ended question. Before you go out shooting film, look around your home town and/or county at night, look for places lighted at night, and make a list of them. After all, photography *is* light, so you need to know where it's found around you at night. Professional and serious amateur photographers do research and will visit places just to walk through them and look for suitable subject material. They will then go back later, sometimes much later, to photograph them during the time of day, weather conditions, and sometimes even the season of year they have developed a vision for of the image they want. Are any of them interesting or historic; are there interesting things happening at them (at least sometimes). Do they have an aesthetic appeal? Anything that is a natural or manmade source of light, anything illuminated by it, and anything reflective (glass, water, shiny metal) that reflects either of the first two is a possible subject. You need only use your imagination. Example: Does your city have any tall buildings? Are any of them hotels? Can you get to one of the top floors and look out any windows in the hallway? Do you have expressways, freeways, or turnpikes with overpasses that have sidewalks? Visit a few at night for the view they have. Even with ISO 400 film, you will likely need a tripod and cable or remote shutter release for exposures longer than what you can do hand held. Visit a local library and look for a "coffe table" book of night photos. For some examples of night photographs that were done in various places around the world (as a specific theme) see the following web site: Go to the link there for "Tope 2: Night Pictures." There is a wide range of about three dozen excellent photos there, any of which would have worked just as well in B/W. Don't worry about the brand of equipment they used; that doesn't matter. The photographer and his/her imagination makes much more difference in the outcome of an image than the equipment brand he/she used. One thing you won't have to worry about with B/W is color balance which can be a very real problem with man-made lights at night . . . which are *not* matched to daylight color films. Hope this helps you out with some ideas.
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