Old San Juan At Dusk

My wife and I wait­ed for over an hour for me to take this shot. I think it was well worth the wait.

Last Mon­day was a sun­ny day. There was­n’t a cloud in the sky, which is rare for the month of August in Puer­to Rico. Typ­i­cal­ly the sum­mer months in Puer­to Rico are char­ac­ter­ized by over­cast skies, usu­al­ly not due to rain clouds but to the Sahara dust that cov­ers the Island for weeks at a time.

Con­se­quent­ly, when I’ve been asked what’s the best time of the year to vis­it Puer­to Rico I’ve always said “Feb­ru­ary” (see my post titled: “When To Vis­it Puer­to Rico And Why?”).

But last Mon­day was per­fect, so I packed up my cam­era, a wide angle lens, a tri­pod and a cable release and I head­ed for Old San Juan with my wife.

Here’s one of those glo­ri­ous sun­sets that you can only catch at El Mor­ro. Click on the image to see it larger.

Pho­tog­ra­phy can be a lone­ly sport. Some­times you have to wait hours for that per­fect shot to appear. And in the mean time, what do you do? Well, you con­verse. Thank­ful­ly my wife has been the per­fect part­ner for over 30 years. We find the ide­al spots, set up our equip­ment and have all sorts of con­ver­sa­tions while we wait for that unique and fleet­ing moment to reveal itself. Then I press the shutter.

Night­time pho­tog­ra­phy is tricky stuff. Besides under­stand­ing the rudi­ments of com­po­si­tion you real­ly need to have a grasp of expo­sure and how it works. As much as cam­eras have evolved dur­ing the last 20 or 30 years, they still can’t think. So you have to think for them.

Plac­ing your cam­era on a tri­pod, set­ting it to “P” (which does­n’t stand for “pro­fes­sion­al”) and press­ing the shut­ter but­ton won’t yield images like the ones in this post. Those take a lit­tle more knowl­edge. Espe­cial­ly about exposure.

This image made the cov­er for the US Nation­al Park Ser­vice’s brochure for Fort San Cristóbal and Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro. Click on the image to see it larger.

When a cam­era eval­u­ates a scene it com­pares it to some­thing called an 18% gray. Have you ever asked your­self which col­or is more preva­lent when you step out­side dur­ing the day? If your answer was “green” you are absolute­ly right. Well, in a pho­to­graph there are two types of infor­ma­tion. There is lumi­nance (the amount of bright­ness in the image) and there is chromi­nance (the amount of col­or infor­ma­tion). Togeth­er they make up your image.

Well, this isn’t intend­ed to be a tech­ni­cal arti­cle, so lets just say that 18% gray is what you have in the typ­i­cal hue of green that you see all around you in nature.

So why did I go into all this tech­ni­cal jar­gon in a post about Old San Juan After Dusk? Well, because if you don’t con­sid­er these facts when tak­ing night­time shots all your bright areas will be blown out!

here’s anoth­er once-in-a-life­time image. Click on it to see it larger.

So what’s the trick? Brack­et­ing! Pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers always brack­et their shots. That means tak­ing the pic­ture at the expo­sure sug­gest­ed by your cam­era meter and then tak­ing a cou­ple of under­ex­posed or over­ex­posed shots as the cir­cum­stances might require.

Anoth­er indis­pens­able tool is a tri­pod. Why? Because there’s sim­ply no way that you’ll hold the cam­era rock steady for the amount of time required to make a night­time image. Espe­cial­ly if you take advan­tage of your lens’s sweet spot.

What’s that?

Most lens­es give you the sharpest shots near the mid­point of their expo­sure scale. That means that if your lens goes from f/4.5 to f/29 (like my Sig­ma 10–20mm does), then your mid­point will be some­where around f/11 or f/16. And what does “f” mean? Well, let’s just say that it’s your aper­ture val­ue. Sim­ply put, most lens­es will give you the sharpest image when they are halfway open.

Why is that important?

Because the more you close down your aper­ture the longer your expo­sure is going to have to be. Hence, you will inevitably need a tri­pod and a cable release.

Why a cable release?

A cable release is a gad­get that actu­ates your shut­ter with­out you need­ing to press the actu­al shut­ter but­ton. Why is this impor­tant? Because at long expo­sures even the small­est vibra­tion can ruin your shot.

Well, enough about the tech­ni­cal stuff. If you’re a pho­tog­ra­ph­er you should already know all these things. And if you’re not, at least I’ve point­ed you in the right direction.

here’s a shot that did­n’t require any arti­fi­cial light­ing. Click an image to see it larger

Old San Juan isn’t lit at night like many cap­i­tals in Europe or the Unit­ed States are. Only some his­tor­i­cal build­ings and mon­u­ments are blessed with night­time light­ing. But that does­n’t mean that you can’t take spec­tac­u­lar night shots. “Au con­traire”. San Juan offers a pletho­ra of oppor­tu­ni­ties for the night­time pho­tog­ra­ph­er, from stun­ning sun­sets to strik­ing sil­hou­ettes. All you need is a lit­tle imagination.

Of course, like a friend of mine always says, local pho­tog­ra­phers will always have an advan­tage because they’re always here. But with a lit­tle luck you’ll be at the right place at the right time to take that once-in-a-life­time image that you can show with pride.

Take for instance this image that I made of “La Rog­a­ti­va” (Pro­ces­sion Square) back in 2009. I made this image using a Canon EOS 50D body , a kit lens Canon EF 28–135mm a Man­frot­to Tri­pod and a Canon Cable Release. It was shot at f/6.7, at 1/8 sec at a focal length of 47mm.

La Rog­a­ti­va. Click on the image to see it larger.

Chances are that no one in the world has —or ever will have— an image like this one because the fiery sky behind it was one of a kind. But that does­n’t mean that you can’t set up your cam­era and tri­pod at a sim­i­lar posi­tion and take your own ren­di­tion. Like I said, part of it is knowl­edge and part is just show­ing up at the right moment.

Here’s anoth­er exam­ple. I took this shot on a cloudy day. Nor­mal­ly, cloudy days are use­less days for land­scape pho­tog­ra­phers. They’re great for shoot­ing faces and flow­ers, but land­scapes? Ugh!!! Well, here’s the exception.

Fiery sun­set at San Juan Bay. Click on image to see it larger.

I made this shot with the same equip­ment. My wife and I were about to leave Old San Juan. It was one of those days that start­ed out pret­ty and dete­ri­o­rat­ed into an ugly cloudy evening. We were tired of walk­ing so we sat for a cou­ple of  min­utes near the south side of La For­t­aleza (the gov­er­nor’s man­sion). All of a sud­den the sky lit up in shades of yel­low and fiery red. This is the kind of thing that you can’t plan for. It just happens!

There are also times when you have to con­struct your own image. Here’s an exam­ple. Take a look at the image on your right. It’s a phys­i­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty. Most peo­ple look at it, love it and nev­er give it anoth­er thought. But there are two things going on in this pic­ture that sim­ply can’t coexist.

Sun­set at San Juan Bay. Click on image to see it larger.

I shot this image with my Canon 7D  at an aper­ture of f/16 and a shut­ter speed of 16 sec­onds. That’s what accounts for the foamy water. Then why is the bird razor sharp? Sim­ple! Beca­sue I put it there in Pho­to­shop. If there’s one thing I have learned is that in this era of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy any­thing is pos­si­ble even if it seems impossible.

“Totem Telúri­co” Click on the image to see it larger.

Then there are the shots that you nev­er expect­ed to take, like the image of the “Totem Telúri­co” that sits on the south­ern side of Quin­scen­ten­ni­al Square on the north side of Old San Juan. I was just walk­ing by dur­ing the “San Sebas­t­ian Street Fies­tas” back in Jan­u­ary of 2005. It was a cloudy night. And that’s exact­ly what caught my eye: the gloomy sky behind the “Totem Telúrico”.

I was­n’t car­ry­ing a tri­pod. So what did I do? I impro­vised. I placed my cam­era against a wall, held my breath and popped off a cou­ple of shots at an aper­ture of f/2.8, 1/10 sec shut­ter speed and at a focal length of 24mm. I think it came out pret­ty good!

“Raíces” Foun­tain. Click on image to see it larger.

Final­ly, I want to men­tion my image of the “Raíces” foun­tain, that sits at the end of “La Prince­sa Prom­e­nade”. Now, here’s an image that you can only make if you bring the right equip­ment. Why? Because there’s nowhere to “lean your cam­era” or resort to any oth­er “pho­tog­ra­pher’s trick”. If you don’t bring a tri­pod  you won’t be able to make it.

I made this image back in 2004 using the now his­toric Canon EOS 20D. It was shot at an aper­ture of f/11 with a shut­ter speed of 1 sec­ond. The focal length was 42mm. The long expo­sure time is what accounts for the almost sur­re­al aspect of the water.

As we’ve seen, night­time pho­tog­ra­phy is a lot of fun and you don’t need to live in Madrid or New York where most of the mon­u­ments and his­tor­i­cal build­ings are lit at night. Some­times a sun­set, a fiery sky or even a gloomy sky will do just fine towards mak­ing that one-in-a-life­time shot. It’s all a mat­ter of imag­i­na­tion, patience and perseverance.

Enjoy Puer­to Rico,

©2014,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590