Ben Grunow – Panasonic Luminary – June 18 at 9:30 am – Class and Photo walk

Ben Grunow headshot

About Ben Grunow

As a professional photographer with a love of nature and adventure, Ben has traveled all over the globe with many Olympic athletes capturing images and video for various ski/snowboard brands and magazines. He grew up as a athlete and learned to produce his own promotional video as a teen jump starting his career as a professional skier. Eventually being behind the lens made more sense and he has never looked back. Ben lives in Elmore, Vermont as his home base on a family owned farm. He captures action, landscape, time-lapse, weddings, portraits and more. Ben is a Panasonic LUMIX Luminary Team member and his fascination to learn and see through the camera is his driving passion.

 

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Class description:

Time-Lapse Basics and hands on demonstration. This will be a course that will cover techniques for making time lapse photography with the Lumix Camera Systems or any other micro 4/3 or DSLR camera. We will cover how to use time-lapse in your work, to time-lapse video basics in Premiere CC, the gear you’ll need and more.  This is a great chance for beginners who would like learn about creating their own time-lapse to use in their workflow. Immediately following we will take a hour long photo walk and apply it outside the store, finding some subject matter and making our own time-lapse videos. This will be hands on and a great way to get started!

What you will need: Micro 4/3 camera or DSLR that has a intervalometer either plug in or built in. any lens (wider is nice) and a tripod

Free Saturday Focus Sessions – April

Focus sessions are Free and take place in our store from 9:30 am – 10:15 am. Focus Sessions are mini classes and discussions and classes about photography. All sessions will allow for questions and answers. Please bring your camera and any images along that you have questions about. Please share your thoughts for future focus sessions in the comment box below. No RSVP – Free for everyone – Please bring a friend!

focusbanner1Hit the “Like Button” to let your friends know. Have suggestions for future focus sessions? Feel free to leave a comment.

 

Here’s our upcoming Focus Sessions:

March 26 – Easter Flowers / Easter Egg Hunt for the Grown-Ups (discounts a freebies hidden around the store) Limit 1 egg per customer

April 2 – April Showers – Protect your gear

April 9 – Baseball Photography

April 16 – Using Your Camera as an Artist – with special guest John Aiello

April 23 – Night Photography – City Lights

These are free events – bring a friend along if you’d like. Share with your friends on Facebook – Click the Like button below. Hope you can join us!

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Free Focus Sessions – January 2015

Focus sessions are free and take place in the Westwood store from 9:30 am – 10 am. All sessions will allow for questions and answers. Please bring your camera and any images along that you have questions about. Feel free to use the comment option to make suggestions for future focus sessions.

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Hit the “Like Button” to let your friends know. Have suggestions for future focus sessions? Feel free to leave a comment. (Comments actually work now!)

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Here’s our upcoming Focus Sessions:

January 3 – Night Photography / Long Exposures

January 10 – Using Flash Indoors

January 17 – Photo Critique

January 24th – Take Better Portraits

January 31 – Winter Photography / Snow Photography

These are free events – bring a friend along if you’d like. Share with your friends on Facebook – Click the Like button below. Hope you can join us!

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Free Saturday Focus Sessions – March – April

Focus sessions are free and take place in the Westwood store from 9:30 am – 10 am. All sessions will allow for questions and answers. Please bring your camera and any images along that you have questions about. Feel free to use the comment option to make suggestions for future focus sessions.

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Hit the “Like Button” to let your friends know. Have suggestions for future focus sessions? Feel free to leave a comment. (Comments actually work now!)

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Here’s our upcoming Focus Sessions:

March 1 – Decorating with Photography

March 8 – Flash Photography

March 15 – Time Exposures

March 22 – Critique Your Photos

March 29 – Walk About Westwood

April 5 – Sensor Cleaning

April 12 – Phone Photography / Apps

April 19 – Great Landscape Photographs

April 26 – Flower Photography

These are free events – bring a friend along if you’d like. Share with your friends on Facebook – Click the Like button below. Hope you can join us!

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Learn More – Time Exposures

Historical Posting – Originally published in 2004 – Since this is an archived story – products mentioned may not be available or even made any more – Let us know if you have any questions.

If you have a “B” setting on your camera, one of the fun things you can do is to take time exposures. It’s easy to do if you keep several important points in mind. Plan to experiment and have fun. Use your imagination! There are not real hard and fast rules to time exposures, so relax, shoot a lot of film and experiment.

  • Subject. Good subjects for time exposure include just about any bright light source such as traffic patterns, amusement park rides, speeding trains, fireworks and even ships passing in the night. Stationary light sources such as neon signs or holiday illumination can also be time photographed through a technique called “zooming” (see below).
  • Photographing light trails is dependent on keeping the shutter open for an extended period. The correct duration depends on length of exposure, lens focal length and subject distance. Traffic patterns could take anywhere from a few seconds to a minute depending on the distance to the subject and its speed. Amusement rides require a significantly shorter duration. The passing ship will require extended duration because of the speed of the vessel and its distance from the camera.
  • When the angle of view is wide, the exposure must be longer to capture movement because it takes the subject longer to pass through the frame. Conversely, using a telephoto lens isolates a smaller part of the scene, so the exposure is shorter.
  • Be sure to use a tripod and a cable release to avoid camera shake.
  • Determining exposure time. The best way to measure exposure is to read a middle tone in the scene. A car’s taillight is an excellent starting point. After you measure the exposure, set the duration to the time it takes for the subject to move through the frame. Then set the correct aperture for that time.
  • Traffic Patterns. Twilight is an optimal time to capture traffic patterns. Try to position yourself slightly above the traffic. Don’t compose the scene where headlights are shining directly into the lens or set-up on ground affected by traffic vibration. Try to photograph the taillights for saturated red streaks. When using ISO 100 film, eight seconds at f/8 is a good starting point.
  • Amusement Park Rides. Exposure duration should be based on several rotations of the ride. The longer the exposure, the smoother the light will be. Find a position that allows you to include the entire ride. When using ISO 100 film, try an exposure of two seconds at f11 and bracket exposures.
  • Boats. Compose the scene like a city scape or landscape. The light trail is more of an accent than the main subject. Make the longest exposure possible. It could require an exposure of several minutes.
  • Zooming. Zooming allows you to procure streaks from stationary light sources such as neon lights, pin-lit trees and holiday lights. The best sources are bright lights against dark backgrounds. Zooming is not an exact science, so the results may vary. The most popular method is to begin in the wide angle setting, then slowly zoom in to the telephoto setting. The camera does not have to be on a tripod, but it helps. The exposure duration for zooming is significantly shorter than light trails in motion. Basically, you set the shutter speed between one and four seconds, then set the aperture accordingly.
  • Many of today’s modern SLR cameras are equipped with incredible abilities to take time exposures automatically. If you have one of these cameras, try setting it on “Aperture priority” with the smallest setting available on your cameras (F22). Use your flash and set it to “rear curtain sync” for spectacular results. With a little practice you’ll achieve a blending of the light in the background, with your subject “flash frozen” in the foreground.
  • Many of the sophisticated point and shoots also have “night photography modes.” If you have not experimented with this setting on your camera, be sure to give it a try.
  • Helpful Accessories. BCC has a variety of accessories to help you take more dramatic time exposures. These include tripods ($14.95 and up) and monopods ($29.95 and up), cable releases ($11.95 and up), and bean bags ($20 and up) for steadying your shots plus the Black Cat Exposure Guide ($19.95) and the Kodak Pocket Photo Guide ($12.95) to provide advice on any exposure setting for almost every possible shooting situation.

Tom’s Rules For Time Exposure:

  1. Have fun.
  2. Use your imagination.
  3. Bracket your shots.
  4. Shoot a lot of film!