Orion Over Prestbury, Cheshire
Orion heralds the beginning of 2012 in Prestbury. Starting the New Year with some night-time photo experiments and I’m very happy with the results! This shot was taken from a field just off Chelford Road and the magical essence of this still, quiet, mysterious but optimistic night has been crystallised in this image (for me) it was a 61second exposure — I had no idea what the camera was going to see.
Night View in Memory
The Phantom Lightpainters Trail
More experimentation in the local fields — with LED torch. I’m very interested in the possibilities of this technique and want to experiment with long exposure and mobile illumination a lot more frequently. This could yield some very interesting results in a snowy landscape.
Draw Down The Moon
The phantom light painter makes his mark in the night.
{ White Nancy, painted with light (LED Torch) and 20 second exposure at 100 ISO f5. Lens: Sigma 10-20mm. }
I have been planning this kind of thing for some time now and last Sunday the conditions were just about right. It was a fairly balmy night with a clear sky and a large and reasonably bright waning moon. I decided to ride up to Kerridge with all of my gear crammed into a back pack — not a very comfortable ride with a tripod and large camera on ones back but I just felt that I had to try my White Nancy light painting experiment. I took some flash shots too but they are much less interesting than these.
The photos were taken with a Nikon D80 which is probably not really the best camera for such long exposures, some have reported that they are very noisy above 1 second of activity due to the current hungry sensor heating up but these shots appear to be better than I had expected though they are not suitable for up-scaling and printing at any appreciable size unfortunately.
I enjoy light painting for a number of reasons, not least being out doors after dark but there is also something very interactive about it, the sense of actually working with the image as the camera is capturing it is very satisfying and creates a feeling of man and machine (camera) working in some new kind of harmony.