"Fireworks Finale" by Eric Rennie

A digital camera is essentially a computer with a lens attached to it.  Its functions are fully automated, so you can take decent pictures without having to do much more than point the camera and shoot.  Everything changes, however, when you shoot in the dark.  To get decent pictures, you have to switch to manual mode and make careful adjustments to ISO settings, shutter speed, aperture and focus. A lot of this is trial and error.  ISO settings should be as low as possible so you don’t wind up with a lot of image noise – the digital equivalent of graininess in film images taken in low light.  Automatic focus doesn’t work well in the dark, and manual adjustments aren’t much better because you can’t see clearly. And since exposure times are now calibrated in seconds rather than fractions of a second, you are better off using a tripod and shutter release cable; otherwise, your images are likely to be spoiled by camera shake.  At least with digital cameras, you are not using up a lot of film trying to get the picture to come out right – and you don’t have to wait for your film to be developed to find out.

The limitations of cameras shooting in the dark point up just how well engineered the human eye is by comparison.  As you may remember from biology class, our eyes have two kinds of photoreceptor cells: cones, which work best in bright light; and rods, which are much more numerous and can be triggered by a single photon, making them most effective in low light. Together they enable the human eye to maintain sensitivity to brightness over nine orders of magnitude (about one billion times).  The eye adjusts automatically to changes in illumination, although it may take the rods a half hour or longer to adapt fully to darkened conditions after exposure to bright light. 

The image above is one of two appearing in a juried competition called "After Dark IV" at the Greg Moon Gallery in Taos, NM.  The all-media exhibit, which runs from June 6 to June 27, 2015, is a "a show celebrating darkness and the varied reactions emblematic to this subject matter."  The  jurors are JUXTAPOZ magazine co-founder and gallery owner Greg Escalante and curator Joe Buffalo Nickels. The photo was taken several years ago at a July Fourth fireworks display held at Stanley Park in New Britain, CT.  My other entry, entitled "Clown God," appeared in shows on opposite coasts last fall.