Long exposure, 1/25/14 and 1/30/14

Yay, Linda and I signed up for more photography classes. Scott Kubo with the Honolulu Museum of Art has another 14 sessions.

The first 2 weeks we are focusing on night lights and starry skies. This means that a tripod or a steady surface helps with keeping the camera steady as some of our shots are 45 seconds to 13 minutes long.

My condo has a roof top that is available to the residents. I invited Linda over and we had fun taking pictures of the city lights.

Boy talk about a perfect night. This week was filled with lots of rain and wind but this night when our class made arrangements to get together the weather was perfect.  When we got to our destination, I noticed a beautiful sun setting.

(This is a repost, 2/9/14 - as much as I like Lightroom because all the pictures and edits are on the same page, I find that Photoshop's - "levels" is a better way to correct exposure) This time the water fountain is more visible as I wanted it in my foreground and the brightness of the sun is reflected on the leaves.

Did you notice the 2 just above show a green flash. The second is actually a cropped picture to make it easier to see the flash. I was hoping to see this because I could see that the horizon was not hazy. The tree in the foreground made it difficult for me to focus on the flash but yay, I got it.

Here is an explanation

The sunset was so beautiful!

As the stars appeared...

I decided not to have the tree in my next picture because I was going to leave the shutter open for 13 minutes which I think would have made the tree too bright. What you now see are star trails because of the earth's rotation.