CrowGirl
Light painting #1
Tonight's "I can't sleep so I may as well take photos" exercise...light painting.
Materials: One bunch of beautiful, well-photographed flowers. One small flashlight*. One tripod. One camera.
(* I experimented with red and orange mini lights too, but didn't like the colours they added to the flowers. The clear flashlight illuminated without changing the colours, which worked best in this case.)
Procedure: Find a dark spot -- as pitch black as you can manage. Set camera on tripod. Set up shot with lights on. Switch to manual mode on camera, set aperture to 3.2, time to...[multiple experiments]...6 seconds. Turn out the lights, hit the shutter button, turn on flashlight, wave around beneath the flowers until the shot finishes. Voila, selectively-lit glowy flowers.
Things I learned:
~ Having your subject sitting close to a background makes life more difficult, because your light may accidentally illuminate said background when you don't actually want it to show up in the shot.
~ Wave that flashlight! Pausing for even a second will overexpose part of the subject, and/or create a bright flash where the light itself paused.
~ Don't point the light at the camera when you're waving it around, or you'll get a light streak like the one in the image above. Which is kinda cool if that's what you're aiming for, but less cool if you didn't want that sort of thing.
~ Making little mini-snoots for your flashlights helps, but you can also just cup your hand around the bright end to control the light diameter and spill. This ain't rocket science -- just fun.
~ I'm not coordinated enough to work two lights in two directions simultaneously, even though I can pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time. ;P
P1110679
April 2008
Light painting #1
Tonight's "I can't sleep so I may as well take photos" exercise...light painting.
Materials: One bunch of beautiful, well-photographed flowers. One small flashlight*. One tripod. One camera.
(* I experimented with red and orange mini lights too, but didn't like the colours they added to the flowers. The clear flashlight illuminated without changing the colours, which worked best in this case.)
Procedure: Find a dark spot -- as pitch black as you can manage. Set camera on tripod. Set up shot with lights on. Switch to manual mode on camera, set aperture to 3.2, time to...[multiple experiments]...6 seconds. Turn out the lights, hit the shutter button, turn on flashlight, wave around beneath the flowers until the shot finishes. Voila, selectively-lit glowy flowers.
Things I learned:
~ Having your subject sitting close to a background makes life more difficult, because your light may accidentally illuminate said background when you don't actually want it to show up in the shot.
~ Wave that flashlight! Pausing for even a second will overexpose part of the subject, and/or create a bright flash where the light itself paused.
~ Don't point the light at the camera when you're waving it around, or you'll get a light streak like the one in the image above. Which is kinda cool if that's what you're aiming for, but less cool if you didn't want that sort of thing.
~ Making little mini-snoots for your flashlights helps, but you can also just cup your hand around the bright end to control the light diameter and spill. This ain't rocket science -- just fun.
~ I'm not coordinated enough to work two lights in two directions simultaneously, even though I can pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time. ;P
P1110679
April 2008