This is a world of solitude and social interaction. One of reflection and self improvement. A place to better oneself and leave the stress of the world. A place to tear ones body down and start anew. It is empowering. You will find yourself here, and reflect on who you want to be.
You will be drowned out by the noise but at the same time deeply focused. Loud music, screaming, won’t be distractions but only help to encourage and focus. Ultimately you will determine what your made of. We can only guide and encourage you.
Our world is humid, hot, and grungy and smells of hard work, blood, sweat, and ammonia. There is a beat, the place is alive.
This is part of a series I did for my photography class on a place that has special meaning to me.
I wanted to do something special for valentines day this year and being the photographer that I am I decided to make a photo. Now normally I don’t like putting text in my photos but for this occasion I tried to become my own Halmark. For these photos I went to the store to buy some roses and the white vase that you see in the photos. The original idea was to find an old wooden work shack, preferably with a hole in the roof and light the scene such that it looked like moon light coming down on the roses. Seeing as it was hard to find what I had envisioned in my head I had to improvise a little bit. One of my new favorite places to shoot (the greenhouses behind the vet school at A&M ) I found a little wooden walkway over a moat, and decided that would work well for these photos. I wanted to focus the light on the roses and have everything else be pretty dark but I didn’t want the transition to be really harsh. So to increase the ambient light around the roses I bounced a speed light into a micro mini (white side) to diffuse the light and bring up the foreground. To light the rose I had a snooted speed light high and to the right. This pretty simple lighting worked very well.
Call me a sucker for light paintings but I just love the results and they are kind of fun to make. Unlike some photographers I don’t write things with flash lights or outline objects but I use them to light a scene in interesting ways. For these photos I took a bunch of greenhouses and wanted to make them look more millitary-ish. The two red lights are from two energizer head lamps and the “spotlight” on the door is actually an LED flashlight laid out on the ground across from the door. To bring the ambient light up to an acceptable amount I used a 1,000,000 candlelight powered flashlight that pluged into my car and drove around durring the 12 or so minutes it took to take the photo and lit the scene from all sides.
This photo was created in a much similar manner as the one above only this LED flash light is much smaller and I tried to create a slightly more mysterious scene. I wanted people to wonder why there was a flashlight laying on the ground.
Below is a black a white version of the first attempt were the exposure was too short and I had to boost it in lightroom.
Some basic tips for light paintings:
- Try out different flashlights. Almost all of my light paintings use a bunch of different flashlights.
- If the scene is large thing about getting one very powerful flashlight to move around and provide ambient lighting.
- As with most long exposures at night… use the lower iso setting that you can. These were all shot at ISO 50
- Thing about depth of field. I first tried shooting at F22 but quickly realized that the exposure times were going to be unacceptably long (I had people with me and we were out there for 2 hours just to take these three photos as it was). I settled on F18 and because I was using a wider lens it wasn’t much of a compromise.
Be sure and leave your questions and comments in the comments section.
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