Point Reyes Trawler, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Even though thick fog blanketed the night skies, I think the night photography workshop I taught this past weekend on Point Reyes was a success. The weather, of course, is not a tame lion—and I was amazed at the creative responses to the weather conditions, the talent of the workshop participants, and that no two photographers came up with the same image, even when photographing in near proximity. What a great group of people!

On Saturday evening we went to photograph the Point Reyes trawler behind the Inverness general store. I was hoping for another shot of the star trails around Polaris by pointing my camera directly at due north behind the boat (this time I would have tried statistical stacking as in Night Vortex). But obviously the cloud cover ruled out star trails.

David, who helped us experiment with light painting at a previous night photo workshop, crawled onto the trawler. The assembled photographers shouted directions and encouragements as he light painted the interior of the boat cabin.

Next day, I was pleased and surprised at the level of interest in post-processing these photos. I used this image as a case study. The original RAW file was dark with a left-side histogram that indicated underexposure. A common reponse: “You got this image from…that!” Of course, to see the original and the way I processed it, you needed to be at the workshop.

[Nikon D300, 12-24mm zoom lens at 12mm (18mm in 35mm terms), 100 seconds at f/5.6 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]