NP: Freezing the long exposures

Exposure: Aperture F3.5|Shutter Speed 30s|ISO 800

This image is taken at Langkawi Island, the famous island with many beautiful beaches in Malaysia.

Thought process: Seeing way too many night seaside/beach images with silky smooth surface to show the calmness of the sea, I'm experimenting with the technique to freeze the moment during long exposures. Normally in 30 seconds exposure the wave at the seashore will be silky smooth, I want to freeze the wave like we have seen during the day time with less than a second exposure, to achieve what I have in mind, I use strobe(SB700), set at the power of 1/64+0.3 to blast on coming wave when it hits the seashore. So the exercise confirms that -

Long Exposure+moving subject=silky smooth/blur look
Long Exposure+moving subject+strobe=static look

And in future, I will try to find stronger wave or moving subject to create more dramatic image at night.

NP: Kuala Lumpur

Exposure: Aperture F11|Shutter Speed 25s|ISO 200|WB Fluorescent

Finally I have decided to shoot the surroundings of our main city - Kuala Lumpur at night. This is just the beginning and hopefully more things to discover in this lively city.

The image above is made during full moon night, looking at how moon light balancing with various light sources in the scene is amazing, this is not HDR but single exposure image.

NP - Seberang Jaya Industrial Park

Exposure: Aperture F8|Shutter Speed 15s|ISO 200

Back to action at night after flu recovery, I feel really great again to see the night light.

Technical wise, ambient light for background with my car headlight illuminating the foreground to lead the eyes from left to right.

NP: KK Bay Area Romance

Re-processing of my old images, this is located at my beautiful home town Kuala Kurau, like the ambient there, with the wind whispering and raining stars ...

Technical wise, this is stacked using a set of 20 minutes images using Starstax and further processed with layer masking in Photoshop for foreground subject. There are gaps in the star trails as I didn't know how to use intervalometer in D7000 and pressing the shutter manually at that time(I could have used Startrails.exe for better gap filling of star trails but sometimes it's better to remember our mistakes as learning experience)

MNS - Night Portrait

Exposure: Aperture F11|Shutter Speed 15s|ISO 100

Night portrait is way harder than I thought, finding a good background, to place the subject comfortably so they can hold still for long period of time and yet not having that stiff look, and run around to pop the strobe here and there, anyway it's tiresome but fun process.

Technical wise, this is not HDR though it looks like it, for the lighting technique, existing fluorescent light on camera left, then one pop of 1/16 power strobe from the front of the subject at camera right and 3 pops of 1/2 power strobe from the back of the subject at camera right. The post process is straight forward, just unsharp mask and minor contrast adjustment.

MNS - Flawless Moment

Exposure: Aperture F11|Shutter Speed 15s|ISO 400|WB Fluorescent

Technical wise, I seem to use fluorescent white balance more especially with sodium vapor lit night scene, this WB setting retains both red and blue channel very well(not extreme to one channel so we can have the best of both worlds)

The flawless sky is made by the old lady who walked through my lens view, she had white fabric wrapped on her head loosely and that created smooth cloud colour and shape in the sky.

MNS - Inya Lake Moonset

Exposure: Aperture F8|Shutter Speed 20s|ISO 200

The moon set within the two trees in Inya Lake, Yangon, creating the romance mood for the scene since this location is popular for lovers at night.