Diving Man Multi Pop
Diving Man Statue with three pops from from different angles with speedlite on the end of a monopod.
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens at f16, 33 Seconds at ISO 200
Ambient light is not my friend AKA More painting with Light
For those of you who have been following this blog, you will have noticed that I have been trying different things with Painting with Light. The idea of this shoot was to try using some of these techniques in an urban setting, A kinda Urban Grafitti with Light if you will.
This was the first shot at it and I ran into some big problems right from the start. This sculpture is directly behind “The Behive” (New Zealands parliament buildings) so I thought there might be some issues with security guards. In standard New Zealand fashion two burly security guards rocked up and asked what I was doing but in a kinda apolligetic “we are just doing our job” way and then wished me good luck and hoped I got some good pictures.
Because the sculpture was lit from the front I had to shoot it from the back looking towards the road which was brighter than I wanted so I had to use a ND8 filter and an ND4 Gradient to try and balance the light a bit which then made the torch light too dim.
Nikon D70s 18-70mm Lens f8 at 58 seconds
With this shot I took off the ND8 filter but left the ND4 Gradient on and moved the location of the sphere into a slightly darker area of the image then reduced the shutter time from about 1 minute to about 45 seconds.
Nikon D70s 18-70mm Lens f8 at 45 Seconds
After noticing that there was a dark patch behind the “Banana” sculpture decided to try and see if the ball would look better closer to the camera. I think this image probably worked best of the 3 and also offers the best possibility to put someone inside the sphere since the flash will be out the side of the frame.
Nikon D70s 18-70mm Lens f8 at 34 seconds
All in all there was pretty much too much ambient light and these have been rather harshly tweaked in Lightroom and then Photoshop to get them looking any good at all. I think next time I try this it will be somewhere where it is nice and dark… Possible a cemetery… Should be interesting.
Oh and I almost forgot… I shot a heap of video of all this happening… Will try and edit and put on somehow…
Sycamore Seed
A Sycamore seed dropped in a dark room then lit with a speedlite set on multiple flash of 1/50th of a second.
This sounded kinda simple but doing everything yourself ment that I shot nearly 100 shots and only got a few that were any good.
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm f 11 at 1/10th second with SB80dx set to 1/50th second on multiple flash.
Oriental Beach Renewal
On a Dark and Stormy Night.
Replacing sand before a big beech volleyball tornament. The beech is entirely man made with sand trucked in from Golden Bay in the South Island.
I forgot to take my remote shutter release so could only get short (30 second) exposures and it started raining almost as soon as I got there.
Made for good dramatic clouds though.
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm lens, ISO 200 at 30 seconds
More More Painting with Light
This was an experiment I tried in my front yard last night.
Maglite without hood on a piece of string with a wireless speedlight off to the side on the left of the image.
I liked the way that the speedlite made it look like the light came from the sphere but I feel that there are too many strands to the sphere so might have to try using a solid bar instead of the string… Will post when I get a chance to try it out.
This is all experimentation for an upcoming project of Urban Light Graffiti which I hope will happen in the next few weeks.
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm lens at 18mm. f3.5 at 57 seconds. Speedlite on 1/8 power
More Painting with Light
Up above the Terrace in Wellington.
Experimenting with alternate portrait techniques
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, ISO 200. f22 at 25 seconds with 10W bike light… Subject moved after 10 seconds
Fatherhood Friday 5. Emily Lion and the week we broke Samantha
Another tough week although not as bad as it could have been.
Sam has been waking up 7 or 8 times a night to be fed or settled and this week we decided that we had had enough and it was time for a bit of “tough love” to recover our sanity which had been slipping a bit over the last couple of weeks.
The plan was to start on Sunday and not feed her between 11pm and 5am, this involved me getting up from 11 to just settle and put Sam back to sleep.
Night 1: Fed 3 times before 11pm… Woke at 1am and screamed for 30 minutes then went to sleep… Woke at 3am and screamed for 45 minutes…Woke 5am, Fed went back to sleep till 630am
Night 2: Fed 2 times before 11pm… Woke at 130am and screamed for 10 minutes… Woke at 3am cried for 10 minutes… Woke 5am, Fed and went back to sleep till 6am
Night 3: Fed 1 time before 11pm…Woke 130am…Cried 30 seconds went back to sleep… Woke 5am, Fed and went back to sleep till 645
Last Night: 1st feed 1120pm… Woke 130am for 5 minutes… Bit restless but slept til 615am
Hopefully this improvement continues!
Emily Lion
Come into the Light
This is a really quick mock up of an idea for a shot… It needs another speedlight to come from behind the girls to ballance things up a bit an reduce the all encompasing red a bit.
I like how Sam is going “Here I come!”
Giant Gum Moth
A really big Gum Moth. It was about 20cm from wingtip to wingtip
Luckily it stuck around while I went and got Camera and Flash
Nikon D70s, 50mm f1.8@f5.6 1/60 Second SB80DX
Lit up Flowers
Flowers in my back yard lit with 2 speedlites… One from directly below at full power (Nikon SB16) and one in from the left at 1/4 power (Nikon SB80DX)
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm @70mm, f22 at 2.5 seconds
More Driving
More driving Pics from last Friday with various cameras superclamped to the front grab handle of a Land Rover Discovery
Nikon D70s with 18-70mm lens an ND8 filter and an ND6 graduated filter.
The ND8 was to get a longer shutter speed since it was in the middle of the day and the ND6 Grad was so the sky didnt burn out
With the first 2 images I liked the way that the car infront is still kinda sharp but you get the feeling of movement from the sides being blurry.
Tripod set up in the backseat with the front 2 legs in the passenger footwells and the back leg flat and jammed into the space between the backrest and the seat.
Nikon F5 with 19-35mm lens, Ilford Pan F+ 50 ISO film, ND8 filter and an ND6 graduated filter.
Saw an awsome article at work today from Phase One that was basically showing how they did a whole lot of car images and it gave me an idea for a shoot along the same sort of lines.
Hopefully I can convince some people to help me to hang out the back of 1 vehicle while taking images of another vehicle… Will have to wait and see what happens.
Photo Montage Dunedin Railway Station
Made up of about 20 to 30 images with Nikon D70s and 80-200mm lens.
I couldnt easily get further back without having an incident with traffic so the shots were quite large when it came to putting them togeather in Photoshop.
I like the way all the verticals are all still vertical but all the horizontals are slightly skewed. It appears to be coming out to meet you in the middle of the image.
Seals at Redrocks
Being one of the few days of the year when shops are actually closed the boys from the shop went on a 4WD mission round Redrocks… We must have had at least 9 cameras between 4 people and the boot of the Landrover was almost filled with camera equipment.
All of the female seals have migrated for the winter so only the singe males are left and with no female around the seals are reasonably placid as long as you dont get too close or get between them and the water.
All images with Nikon D70s 80-200mm f2.8 lens
Darkhalide Photography 
Recent Comments