Photography Redux

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Photography is
     Light , Composition
              Depth Of Field, Bokeh
                    Exposure, Focus
                           Aperture, Perspective

Painting with Light

Light painting, light drawing or light graffiti is a technique in which exposure is made in a darkened setting and moving the camera while its pointed at a light source. The first photographer recognised to use this technique was Man Ray in his series "Space Writing"

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 400, 35mm f16, 5 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 400, 35mm f20, 10 sec

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Light Illuminates Texture and Color, Shadows Define Form

"Light illuminates texture and color, shadows define form" is phrase attributed to an american illustrator and writer Howard Pyle. It's a term often used by photographers as "Light illuminates and shadows define" and is a great way to describe dynamic range and contrast. This post though is about a different type of range.

Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ ISO 200, 14mm f5.6, 1/200 sec

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On a photo project this weekend I travelled to Wentworth Falls, its a town in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales about 100 Kms west of Sydney on the Great Western Highway at an elevation of 867 metres.

Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ ISO 200, 14mm f2.8, 1/100 sec

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Choosing carefully I took a walk of medium difficulty down a track that includes steps. A 1.5 km walk to Weeping Rock and Fletchers Lookout with a climb of about 90 metres. Unfortunately I took a wrong turn from the top of Wentworth falls and started down the very steep National Pass Walk a described as difficult with many steps and ladders I was about 300 metres down when I decided to go back.

Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ ISO 200, 16mm f2.8, 1/160 sec

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Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ ISO 800, 14mm f22, 1/6 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 @ ISO 200, 155mm f8, 1/40 sec

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Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ ISO 200, 11mm f8, HDR

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Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ ISO 200, 16mm f22, 1/4 sec

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Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ ISO 200, 16mm f22, HDR

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 @ ISO 200, 70mm f2.8, 1/160 sec

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Bokeh II

Lights from IKEA with my new favourite lens the Nikkor 35mm f2

In focus (sort of) and with a wide depth of field this would be a background.

Depth of field small lots of Bokeh. Nice heh?

Shopping Trip

IKEA is an interesting place. From the quirky flat pack furniture, sprung wood laminate chairs and lighting components you don't seem to find elsewhere its a eclectic mix of interesting and sometimes innovative design. Other times its WTF? Did you know IKEA has named their cheap stuff after Danish places, while the more expensive and luxurious stuff is named after Swedish places? For example Noresskog, Mattlig and Karlstad are product names and one at least (Karlstad) is a Municipality in Sweden. Fascinating huh?

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, f2, 1/200 sec

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, f2, 1/500 sec

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, f2, 1/125 sec
None of these guys looked happy :-{

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, f2, 1/125 sec

Light II

Some more lighting situations . . .

High contrast sun and shadow.

Diffused light through a screen door. This is a merged image made from two shots, one focused on the door, and the second focused on the people outside then manipulated in Photoshop CS4.

This image is high contrast but boosted front light with a SB-900 flash.

Light

We see things using light, light is all our eyes can really see. Visible light appears to be colourless or white and although we can see this light, white is not considered to be part of the visible spectrum because white light is not the light of a single color, or frequency. It is made up of many color frequencies which is why when sunlight passes through a glass of water and lands on a wall you see a rainbow. If you shine the colours red, green and blue in a light and them overlap, you will see magenta. Mixing light where red and green light overlap, you will see yellow. Where green and blue light overlap, you will see cyan. You will notice that white light can be made by various combinations, such as yellow with blue, magenta with green, cyan with red, and by mixing all of the colors together.

Most colour we see is reflected light, like paint or dye molecules that absorb specific frequencies of light and bounce back, or reflect, other frequencies to your eye. The reflected frequency is the color of the object. There are some rules for light, for instance light travels in a straight line, the farther you are from a light source, the dimmer the light and the angle that a light hits a surface (the angle of incidence) is the same as the angle the light bounces off the surface (the angle of refraction).

The larger and closer the light source the softer the light and the further away the light the harder the light, it will have stark shadows. The character and quality of a photograph can be altered by the character and quality of light, so you need to think about how a scene should be lit, what lighting angles get good results, and what exposure settings will bring out the best detail and shading. A hard light (the light source is further away) will generate dark shadows and the direction of the light can place shadows in unattractive positions of a subject. One solution is to diffuse the light. Diffused light is softer and does not cast strong shadows. An overcast day is perfect for a lot of photography for this reason, the sunlight is diffused by clouds. the down side being that a white sky makes a very ordinary photographic backdrop.

Vivid Festival Take III

More photographs of Vivid Sydney see next posts as well . . .

The Light Walk - Is a self guided walk where you can use your mobile phone to access information on the Light Walk sculptures via a internet site for smart phones and 8 Blue Zones through bluetooth.

There are also a number of performers wandering around the walk all with a 'light' theme.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (the MCA) showcases these beautiful and dynamic light art displays in Sydney’s iconic harbour front precinct.







Lighting the Sails - Luminous - this is a light projection of artwork by Brian Eno, on the Sydney Opera House sails. Like a freeform painting it is continuously changing configurations of colour.

Quick Weekend Photography Project

Vivid Sydney runs from 26 May to 14 June, Sydney is host to this international music and light festival that showcases stories through light and sound with the use of innovative new ideas. The festival has transformed the city into a living canvas of light at the Sydney Opera House, The Rocks, Circular Quay and Sydney's city centre. Following this event there’s the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Sydney Design 09.

There are various light installations around 'The Rocks' including one (not shown) in which you have to peddle a bicycle that drives a dynamo that supplies light to some blue LED's that are strung around a tree.

An interesting effect on this wall above, it got a lot of attention from passers by and of the (at least three) wedding parties, while I was there, taking wedding photo's around The Rocks precinct.

The girls from one of the wedding parties lining up against the wall for photo's :-)

Here's and interesting projection onto the roof of a road tunnel under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The Sydney Opera house is lit up with projected art on the sails of the building. The artwork is by Brian Eno, the program called 'Luminous' is the lighting of the Sydney Opera House sails. These change every few minutes and are quite spectacular.

I found that this light show set-up in the rotunda on Observatory Hill had failed as the computers running the show had crashed. And yes! you guessed it, the operating system being projected onto the ceiling so the techies could fix this, shown above, was Microsoft Windows. They should have had it running on an Apple Mac, at least then it would 'just work'.

The view from Observatory Hill looking North towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Luna Park on the distant shore of Sydney Harbour.

How David Hobby created a his 'coming into a shaft of light' look

I just purchased the book 'The Hot Shoe Diaries' by Joe McNally and after browsing it for a little time somewhere there was a mention of stobists blog, a blog about learning how to use off camera flash. McNally apparently reads it too. So I checked my links in the right hand side of the wfrblog under 'BLOGS I READ' and saw a new entry 'Variations on a Two-Light Theme, Pt.2'. Reading David Hobby's entry I was interested in trying to re-create his lighting. Especially when I looked at another example by photographer Peter Yang (here).

So here is my self portrait version . . .

If you read how David Hobby created a his 'coming into a shaft of light' look, what I did was mount my SB900 flash off camera on a manfrotto light stand about two feet, and above, my face. Held up a piece of black card with my left hand acting as a gobo (a card that blocks light) I also had my D300 on a tripod with my (eBay) Phottix Cleon Wireless Remote Control and Nikon 105mm f/2.8 lens on auto focus. I really want to master off camera strobes, they give you such great lighting possibilities.