Light Painting

In this session we used the studio in a different way. We gathered together some fairy lights and torches   to create some light painting. The mini assignment was about using light in other ways. In the studio, you use artificial light such as soft boxes and flash to create well exposed and professional looking images. However there are different lights you can use in more creative ways. Using fairy lights, combined with slow shutter speeds can create some really interesting photos. Equipped with a tripod a camera and some lights we started to shoot our light experimental photos. Here are some of my own.

Not only did we use fairy lights and torches, we also came up with the idea of using flash guns. This technique is called 'Multi-Flash' and consists of holding the flash gun and blasting it multiple times during the long shutter speed. The effect can create some really strange images, but that also look really cool.

I really like all of my photos that I have taken during this assignment. They are all quite different and show good versatility in photographing under different lightings and conditions. For this last photo just above, I used two flash guns and some coloured gels. I placed the gels over the flashes. This created a mutli-coloured colour cast and also created a split lighting effect.

Alamy Session (wk 2)

Studio Shoot

For this session we were able to create further images for our Alamy brief. I chose to use art as an inspiration for this shoot. I thought about paint stained pallets and easels, brushes and pencils in a paint ridden jar. I used the studio lighting as a light source and set up a little scene. 

This is the set-up I created to generate my photos. (the flowers represent the paint jar and pallets)

It worked really well. At first I had my jar quite close to the backdrop, and with an aperture of f.5., this meant that the backdrop was pretty much in focus. I then thought that if I moved the jar forwards, the backdrop would be completely out of focus. This worked because the distance between the subject and background was greater. Here are the images that I took. I have edited them slightly in Lightroom, adding a little contrast and creating a little more saturation to bring out the colours.

They are really strong images with sharp focus. My ideas behind these photographs was the thought of advertising Art. Art companies could use these photographs to advertise what they are about. They could use these photos for things like business cards, websites, etc. I thought about how I could portray art and painting in a very obvious way.