Life at the condo: Photography: Blue Hour

It's all about twilight, folks. I joined Amber and nine other folks at the St. Johns Bridge to shoot pictures after sunset. This is my second class with Zeb - the first was Creative Camera Techniques. My feedback to him should he ever ask for it is that unless he has more to say, starting class closer to sunset would be great. Also, a flashlight would have come in handy when schlepping around after dark. Oh, and he should not make changes to someone's camera settings without showing them how to change it back. I wasted precious twilight time trying to track him down after he told me I should take advantage of the lens I rented from Pro Photo Supply because he changed things and I could not figure out in the dark how to change them back. This was a little frustrating. But Amber is awesome and she stayed late with me, she even took me to the other side of the river so we could pull over in a sketchy looking parking spot along the road and hike back up to the bridge. We were too nervous to attempt the small(ish) hike Zeb recommended so we could capture this one particular shot. The weather cooperated - woohoo! - and we got interesting pictures, if I do say so myself. The blue of the sky is incredible.

Specifics include the following: we should use our daylight setting (it's the sunshine icon - although this really only matters if you aren't shooting in RAW); we should use an aperture somewhere in the middle; take your time when composing your shot; move (like in the Street Photography class); and the Bulb setting, which should actually be at the top of the list. When your camera reaches its limit on shutter speed you might end up at the Bulb setting (note: if you hit the x250 flash sync speed, you've gone too far). You can attach a remote trigger and adjust your shutter speed to pretty much whatever you want. This is handy for when it is really dark. Unfortunately, two nights of cloud cover mean I am still without a star trail. For future reference, you need approximately eight plus minutes to get those. But here's a sampling of what I did get...