Andy Losik’s Islands of Geektopia

One of the best things I have done with my digital camera is making a commitment to use less flash in my photography. That isn’t always the easiest thing to do, especially if your camera doesn’t have a lot of settings. All of those goofy little symbols on the dial can do a bunch of neat things but most people just ignore them.

If you use the “flash-off” icon and you  light your subject enough, the process is pretty simple. The other way to do shots without flash involves greatly slowing down your shutter speed. This is usually done with the big S on your dial. When you slow the speed, you are telling the camera to keep the iris open longer and allow all of the natural light to fill your picture. This is how most night shots are taken. A flash floods the immediate field with ligh, but a slow shutter and long exposure create a much more natural picture…more like the way your eye sees the world.

I took this Christmas picture that way.

The technique is really good for still settings. You run into problems if you have a moving object during a long exposure shot. However, you can get creative and have fun with it too. In the picture below I am moving around in my remodeling project and because I am not in one spot long enough for the camera to imprint me on the image fully I ended up looking kind of ghostly.

This technique is also used by photogs shooting a skyline at night near a highway. The passing cars show up as blurs against the still cityscape.

Quite possibly the biggest factor in whether any low-light, flashless shot is going to be successful is steadiness. It is almost humanly impossible to hold a camera steady enough in hand to take a picture like these. You have to set the camera down. I invested in $15 mini tripod from Best Buy and it has made all of the difference. The trees were taken with the camera setting on the garbage can out by the curb and the washer served as the platform in the basement destruction zone. I have also found that using the self timer takes away any shake my big fat fingers cause when depressing the shutter.

Shoot more pics!