Painting with Light

It's my third week of my "Understanding Light" course and my assignment for this week is to produce 3 examples of painting with light. For those not familiar with the technique, it involves photographing scenes in low-light conditions by "painting" the scene with a variety of light sources. This happens to be the speciality of my instructor who's work you can see at www.nightstockphoto.com.

The technique basically consists of setting up your shot, setting your camera to Bulb exposure, opening up the lens using your cable release and then painting the scene using your light source.For my shots, I had to purchase a couple of items including a cable release, some flashlights, and color gels. I stopped by Vistek to pickup my cable release, UK Products for some flashlights, and All-Star Show Industries to get the colored gels (translucent sheets of colored paper normally used in stage and theatre lighting).

Armed with these tools, I set out to start painting. My first subject was a Japanese stone lantern from our front yard. I first tried to shoot it outdoors but couldn't find a good setting that was dark enough. I eventually moved it indoors where I could control the light better.  In this example I lit the lantern from the inside with a tea light and then painted the outside with a small flashlight covered with a red gel. I used my 18-55mm lens with a focal length of 34 mm, an ISO of 200, and my aperture set at f8.

For my next shots, I moved outdoors to the lake near our house to try and capture some of the late fall cattails on the lake. The pathway around the lake has many sodium vapor lights so the first challenge was to find a spot dark enough. Fortunately we managed to find one nice dark corner and one spot where one of the bulbs had burned out. For my first shot I used the same camera settings as I used with the lantern, along with a combination of yellow and orange gels. For the second shot, I switched to my Tamron 18 - 200mm lens with a focal length of 54 mm, an ISO of 200, and an aperture of f18. I used a slightly larger flashlight with a blue gel applied to it.

Overall it was a great learning experience and definitely a great way to gain a better understanding of light. Not sure if I can see myself heading out in the wilderness to shoot in the middle of the night but you never know.

iPhone - Revision 2

So it's only been a few months since the iPhone was launched and I managed to scoop the exclusive photos of the 2nd generation Apple iPhone. Check it out!

Okay, just kidding. This was actually a test shot I submitted for my class on Understanding light. To achieve this shot, I first setup my props on some inexpensive black velvet. Then I setup my camera on my tripod and used my Canon 50mm f1.8 lens to shoot this scene. The objective was to illustrate the four different lighting positions: front, back, side and three quarter-lighting.

In this particular shot, I propped up a piece of white foam core on top of my camera and then shone an LED flashlight up from below the camera. I was pretty pleased with the even lighting effect I was able to achieve which gave the image a very lifelike 3D look and feel. Class is tomorrow so we'll see what Chantal has to say about it.

Fall Courses Start for Me

So fall is here and it's back to school for me. For the next 8 weeks I'll be taking three courses at both NAIT and Metro College. My first course is a course at Metro on understanding light being taught by Chantal Thorlakson. She does some really neat painting with light photography which you can see at www.nightstockphoto.com. Check out Metro's course offerings at www.metrocontinuingeducation.ca.

The second course is a Photoshop course at NAIT geared specifically towards photographers. I've been meaning to learn Photoshop for quite some time so I decided that rather than hack around in it and try to guess my way around, I would take a course and finally learn how to use it properly. The new NAIT lab my class is in is full of shiny new iMacs which is nice because I've been considering upgrading to one to use for all my photography work. Visit www.nait.ab.ca for information on their photography programs.

Once my Understanding Light course is done I'll be taking another course at Metro called Creative Design in Photography Level I. Once that has been completed I will receive the first level of recognition so that I can move on to more advanced courses.

My First Ever Winning Contest Entry
I belong to a Facebook group called the Young Edmonton Photographers Group and each month the group holds a challenge. The first challenge was for the month of August and was a portrait challenge. I entered this photo that I shot in Barcelona and it was selected by the group as the winning entry! The reward is that my photo will be used as the group's photo for the month of September. Not exactly something I'll be able to retire on but it was great to have my portrait selected by my peers. There were some great photos submitted so I was definitely suprised to win.

The next challenge is an Urban Photography Challenge where we will try to capture Edmonton's urban soul. I have a couple of shots that I plan on submitting. I can't wait to see what the other members of the group come up with.
(http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2888804300)