I recently tried a little “light painting” for the first time, for those not in the know light painting is a night photography technique where one illuminates the subject with a portable light source whilst the camera shutter is open on a long exposure or even ‘bulb’ setting. Obviously the camera needs to be mounted on a tripod for this. The idea is to control the pattern of illumination by literally ‘painting’ the subject with light. I used a powerful LED torch and a 10second shutter with f4 aperture. Some people thought the images were actually HDR (high dynamic range) processed. It is a very engaging technique, which introduces an element of direct physical interaction with the subject and gives a real sense of creative action, almost as if you are painting the image on to a canvas of night. I did my first experiments in St Peter’s churchyard Prestbury but would like to try the technique in even darker settings; possibly up in the hills, I have a secret location in mind.
This ‘blog’ diary may be migrating to a more state of the art (web 2) wordpress platform at the weekend — if I have the time to work with that. It does feel a little like the end of an era but I want to make my blog page(s) a little more dynamic and experiment with various feeds and such like.