welcome to Ditch Auto, it's Jerad, and I wanted to talk about our next challenge
which we pretty much skipped over me and I apologize for that it has been an
extremely busy month but one cool thing that happened earlier this month is a
conversation that I had with one of our fellow Facebook group members
Timothy now you know Timothy as someone who posts quite often to the Facebook
group if you're not part of the Facebook group the links down below make sure to
head over there it's our ditch auto Facebook group where we talk about
photography and just taking pictures getting better at using our cameras we
it's a very encouraging group there's a you know there's a lot of groups on
Facebook but this one is not a negative group it's just a great group of people
and were you know quite a few people in that group but it's it's it's been a lot
of fun to be a part of that community and I thank everybody that has joined
because it's just it's really cool to be able to jump in there share photos
comment on each other's photos encourage each other and all that good stuff it
just helps us you know enjoy our passion even more so I asked Timothy and a
Facebook message what he thought about a new challenge and he suggested like the
blue hour so the blue hour is that time before the Sun has completely set where
the sky is really blue and I you know I guess I'd been taking pictures at this
time for you know quite some time without understanding that it was the
blue hour or necessarily that it was a specific you know photography moment
with a name up until a few years ago when when I was taking some photos at a
wedding and I thought like okay let's go outside and I had another photographer
with me and I said okay well we're gonna go outside we're gonna take a picture
right when the Sun is setting and there's like that that blue you know and
he's like oh the blue hour and I'm okay there's a name for it so I've really
enjoyed taking photos at that time I have a couple of photos that I'm showing
you right now in this video and I'll post in the
Facebook group of examples photos but I'm also going to include some of
Timothy's photos here because he has a lot of really good examples as well and
I if you're not understanding necessarily what the blue hour is or
maybe you didn't know that it was a thing you may even have some photos it's
one of those times that we've just always appreciated because the sky is
beautiful at that time and it makes for a really good picture but we might not
necessarily think to take a picture at that time or that it actually had a
specific name so the challenge this month is to go out and take pictures in
the evening and you can actually do this in the morning as well there seems to be
like a blue hour in the morning and a blue hour in the evening and it might
not even be a whole hour it might just be a small fraction of time so I found a
resource online which is a website you go to and you tell it where you live and
it gives you an approximate time that the blue hour will be in the morning in
the evening so it helps you know like okay what time should I go out and and
prepare for and it makes it easy for you to know when that time is so for me I
wanted to talk a little bit about you know how I set up my camera or the
settings and some of the things that might help you when going and taking
photos at this at this time now during this time like it's not super bright
outside the Sun is very low it's the sky is starting to become illuminated and
it's not over illuminated which might wash out this guy but it is partially
illuminated which means that the landscape or whatever is in front of you
might not necessarily be very bright yet so there are a lot of situations where a
good portion of your photo might be underexposed in order for you to expose
the sky properly so this is where maybe taking a couple of photos might come
into play and you might actually go and composite the photos together or if you
are familiar with HDR photography you might play with HDR photography because
with bracketing on your camera your camera would take a couple of different
exposures like a bright a red and an underexposed and so that way all
those mixed together would produce a properly exposed photo all the way
across and then of course the cool things about HDR which is making it look
edgier or more sharp or something like that because you have a lot more camera
information to work with now if you have a camera that is a little bit older or
perhaps isn't very good in low-light situations you may actually want to put
your camera on a tripod and set your camera to a slower shutter speed to get
more light in on the camera because they're more light and on the sensor
because in a situation where your landscape or whatever is below the sky
is not very exposed you might have to increase the ISO sensitivity so that you
can get more light on that sensor and in doing that sometimes you might end up
getting some noise so if you have an older camera think about maybe a tripod
and lock your camera off on a tripod one tip to just minimize camera movement is
to use the countdown timer what I typically would do and I don't do this
so much anymore but what I would do back in the day is I would put it on the
two-second countdown and then I would have it locked off on a tripod have my
exposure and everything set right I push the shutter button and then I would get
the photo and there would be no movement because sometimes even pushing the
shutter button could move the camera just a little bit and so using the
countdown make sure that the camera is completely still when you take the photo
now these days I'm using cameras that are really good in lower light
situations and so most of the time I'm shooting handheld unless I have a
scenario that calls for it otherwise and of course shooting bracketed shots
which I explained earlier for like HDR you could pull off some really cool
photos as well so the blue hour is fun because the sky gets beautiful
it reflects beautiful onto the earth and you can really get some cool effects or
some cool shots now I find it really easy to just take a picture of a blue
sky by setting your camera settings to make this guy blue I don't want
to do that I want you to wait to that time of day whether it be in the morning
or the evening where the sky is naturally blue and I want you to take a
photo during that time and think about what the blue blueness of the sky or the
coloring of the sky is doing - - whatever it is around you to make your
image more interesting to tell a little bit of a story my favorite photo which I
showed earlier and I'll show it again is this photo it's like the background on
my phone it's the background on my computer sometimes and what I absolutely
love about this is that it was during that blue hour time but there are also
some other other colors in the sky so it's not completely blue but you do see
the blueness of the sky coming in and just affecting a lot of things that
blueness of the sky changes the temperature the color temperature of the
earth and I'm just able to get really cool colors out of everything
very cool detail out of the water even that you see this little like stream
kind of coming through the shot it's a photo that I just absolutely love and I
captured that one when I went up to Oregon to shoot the Eclipse last year in
2017 I went up and shot the the totality Eclipse which was a lot of fun but some
of my favorite photos were some of the photos that I got just going and fooling
around in the areas that we were at and that was one of the photos that I just
really absolutely loved so have fun with it we're doing these challenges for an
entire month because I want you to go out multiple times and try different
things you might try a landscape situation in the blue hour you might try
a portrait situation in the blue hour or some architectural or some street
photography there's so many different options that you know it's it's
countless but we are going to try and be more frequent with the challenges
especially going into summer time where I'm at here in the United States going
into the summer we have our cameras out we have a lot more activity a lot more
things going on so I definitely want to provide some additional challenge
to everybody to get out there and use your camera more because that's the key
to getting better with photography so if you have any questions or any thoughts
definitely ask them down in the comment section below I invite everybody to take
part in this challenge and come join us in the Facebook group it's for everybody
and it's free there's no charge just come and join in and help help others
others will help you we'll grow together as photographers and be better because
of it so that's gonna do it for today's video thanks a lot for being patient
with me and I hope to see you back here in the next one