City of lights
Downtown Annapolis comes alive with glowing displays during holiday season
Photography is painting with light and there is no better canvas than downtown Annapolis during the holidays. The city comes alive with glowing displays.
FromCity Dock, upMain Street, alongMaryland Avenue and down West Street, you can see a kaleidoscope of glowing colors.
Photojournalists express art and cover an assignment with a camera, gaining experience over the years in howdifferent techniques best tell a story. For a photo assignment on downtown Annapolis during the holidays, Iwanted to use a few different techniques to capture the magic of the city this time of year.
I used a tripod to steadymy camera, and that forcedme to think about the framing of each scene. The tripod also helps with another technique, using a slowshutter speed.
Slowshutter speeds makemoving objects blurred, creating colorful images fromsomething as simple as car tail lights, and adding even more color to standing objects.
For some shots, I used a slow shutter speed combined with racking the zoom lens fromtight to wide while making an exposure. It created a feeling of fireworks from displays ofwords and letters, making them zoom toward the viewer.
Shooting with the camera on manual exposure mode gives me the control to get the shots Iwant. I can experiment with setting the f-stops, ISO sensitivity and shutter speeds.
These variables affect both motion and depth of field, or how much the background in a photo is blurred. It’s a technique that can scare photographers who have come to rely on auto settings, but right nowis a good time to learn.
You can see your results immediately and knowif you are in the ballpark.
So, grab your camera and a warm coat, go out there and make some holiday magic.