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
Zombies and Wookies
Not usually seen togeather… Can wookies actually become Zombies? Were these infact Zombie Wookies?
Must have been the Rugby Sevens
Nikon F5 ,50mm f1.8, Ilford Delta 400 ISO film
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!”
Water Bike Jump
Shot at an X-Air in Wellington a couple of years back
Nikon F5 80-200mm, f2.8 Lens, Ilford HP5 400 ISO film
Random Shop windows
A couple of random shop window shots from London
The trick with shooting through windows is to place the front of the lens directly against the window so you dont get any reflections and it also means you can use slow shutter speeds.
Nikon F5 19-35mm lens Fuji Velvia 50 ISO film
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 Painting with Light
Island Bay Skatepark on a cloudy but moonlit night.
In order to get the desired effect I had to do alot of running around. It took nearly exactly 30 seconds to run a curcuit of the skate park at full speed.
I was glad there was no one around to see me running round in the middle of the night at a skate park with a torch.
The gold coloured light came from the sodium street lamps running beside the road next to the park.
Nikon F5 Tokina 19-35mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 Film, f5.6 for 30 seconds, 10W bike light used for painting.
Darkhalide Photography 
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