Back in October 2007 Aoife and I spent a few days in San Francisco during our honeymoon. Before we travelled over I knew the one place I wanted to see was Alcatraz – once considered to be the most secure prison in the world, and somewhere that first came to my attention in one of those big David Copperfield illusions in the late 1980s.
Planning ahead, I booked our tour online well before we headed to San Francisco, and opted for the night tour. The setting sun added a whole new atmosphere to the prison as we walked toured it, and also of course made photography increasingly difficult due to the falling light levels.
The image above was taken in what was the library of the prison, and I used a technique that I sometimes employ when I want to take a shot of a large room, and when there’s not a lot of light available.
To take in as much of the room as possible I put my lens to its widest focal length – in this case 18mm. This ensured I got as much of the room in the frame as I could. I then put the lens right down on the ground, raising the front of it slightly to take in less of the floor and some of the ceiling. This has the added benefit of keeping the camera quite steady, as most of its weight is now resting on the ground and all I have to do is keep the hand propping up the lens reasonably steady.
This steadiness will help to counter the low light levels. I also improve my chances of a sharp shot by going for a small aperture, and so a large depth of field – this will mean that more of the picture stays in focus. The trade off is that I’ll need a slow shutter speed, but I’m reasonably happy with how steady I can keep the camera, so this is ok.
The slow shutter speed itself will cause all the moving people to blur, so to give the eye a focal point in the photo, I ask Aoife to stay still for a few seconds, and put the point of focus on her.
There’s some natural light coming in from the sky light at the top of the frame though this adds little to the overall exposure. The bulk of the scene is lit by the indoor tungsten lights and in this case the camera’s automatic white balance does a reasonable job of mixing these two light sources and to produce a nice warm tone in the final image.
The problem solving process involved first finding solutions to the framing and low light issues, and these solutions themselves generated a problem of motion blur. This in turn was solved by manipulating the subject in the frame, and the end result is a very usable photograph.
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