Cafe culture goes way upmarket

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Low-light photography offers a whole suite of challenges in either optical or digital, and your solutions to these tests might be different on different days (or shoots). It all depends what results you want: the pro might want a tack-sharp image without grain, because s/he is more than likely shooting for a brochure. The amateur will want a good, clear shot, and can afford to live with a little grain, since the image isn't going to be published, much less at large size. Either way, your choices (your solutions to the challenges) will define this project: stop the action, or "correctly expose" the background, produce fantastic depth-of-field with blurred figures, or accept a little grain in the shot...? It's all about film speed, aperture, and shutter speed. Here's a few ground rules to help you make the decision: high shutter speeds will stop the action (no blurry figures), but you'll need either (or both) bigger apertures or faster film speed to get those fast shutter speeds. Big apertures cost you depth of field, and fast film speeds give you grainy images. Long shutter speeds give you blurry figures (anything that might be moving), plus the probability that you'll get "camera shake" during the exposure, which means the whole shot is blurry. Somewhere among all those "downsides" is a happy medium, and depending on what you need or want out of the finished shot, you'll make your decision. Photo by Mel, 2009. (The National Wine Centre, Adelaide, South Australia.)

Still life, with wine casks

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Here's a taste of history, standing at the entry to a carpark in McLaren Vale ... those wine barrels could be fifty year sold -- or older! "Life meets art" here, too. The photo has been profoundly enhanced to produce an affect almost like a painting. The original photo was captured with the Fuji S6500fd ... and was flat, without much color, and "washed out" by the lighting conditions. At the software level, the contrast was flattened, the color was resaturated, the whole image was darkened, and then sharpened to the point where it takes on the "art" look. Photo by Mel, 2007.

Windows onto pure color

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Some of the most amazing usages of color are found in stained glass windows. You normally associate these with churches ... images of saints and holy people performing wondrous works -- but it's not always so! Several wineries trading in the McLaren Vale region of South Australia display some amazing stained glass windows, and only one of them began life as a church. This winery's label is -- fittingly! -- Chapel Hill. The building was certainly a church, but these days the interior is given over to wine casks, the relief of coolness after the summer heat, and some of the best wines this state produces. Photographing stained glass is always a challenge. You must take control, don't let the camera do its own thing! Go to manual exposure and work out a happy medium between the darkest and brightest areas of the glass; then focus with great care on the straight, or hard, lines in the images. Photo my Mel, 2008.

On the inside, looking out

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We're back at Grant Burge estates, the winery in the Barossa ... I've uploaded two shots already from this shoot, and here's the third which should put the whole thing in perspective. See Life Meets Art... and also Symmetry, and you'll have the whole picture! The first shot was taken in, and features, the inside of the courtyard, under the vines -- sheltering from ferocious heat. The second shot was captured out in the gardens, looking back at the astonishing symmetry of the architecture. This shot is looking out into those gardens from the high, arched -- glassless -- windows you saw in picture two. The exposure was tricky: the challenge was to make a digital camera give you the aperture and shutter speed you need to correctly expose the outside, not the inside! (As I've said before, a little theory of photography goes a long way indeed.) The camera was one of the Fujis. I think, probably the 5500. Photo by Jade, 2007.

Symmetry

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I love symmetry in architecture. This is the rear side of one of the biggest Barossa wineries, Grant Burge estates. In fact, a while ago I posted a frame taken inside the courtyard you see here (Life Meets Art... ). You can look in through the central arch, here, and see the vines which generate the incredible dapple of green shade captured in the the previous shot. In fact, those chairs you saw in Life Meets Art are standing against the wall to the right of the archway. The heat was intense, the light was brilliant. This frame has been enhanced to get the most out of both dark and bright areas. The camera was most probably the Fuji Finepix 3500. Photo by Jade, 2007.