Photo Project: Painting with light

One of the best things about having an SLR camera is the absolute flexibility it gives in getting creative with your shots. Sure, the more advance prosumer cameras on the market today are almost equalling the slr camera in terms of functionality and even quality, but still, with the added bonus of changing lenses to suit your photographic needs, the slr still can't be beat.

Just now, I embarked on another of my photography projects. This time, it has to do with painting with light. The term "painting with light" basically means leaving the shutter open for long periods and then, using some light source, make patterns or shapes that are eventually captured on the camera sensor.

I must admit, this is my first serious attempt at this, and let's just say it is going to be something that I may well be coming back to time and again. The possibilities are just endless, only being limited by your creativity - or perhaps your artistic ability.

What's needed for this shot: Shutter release (though not essential if your exposures are less than 30s as you can use your camera's timer to release the shutter), a torchlight, and a flash.

Here's how I did it:

1. I framed the shot with the lights on, and focused.
2. Dial in the camera settings: 30s at f/19.
3. I pictured in my mind's eye what I planned to draw and switched off the lights.
4. Give some time for your eyes to adjust to the darkness (mine was almost complete darkness), and then trip the shutter.
5. Start drawing, switching off your torch at the end of every completed shape.
6. Fire your flash.

And after all that, you should get something like this:

ISO100, f/19, 30s, flash fired with test button

Enjoy experimenting!

Another low-light opportunity

These are some shots I took during the pre-Chinese New Year event organised by the Kota Kinabalu City Hall this evening. I brought along my small tripod just in case there were some shots which required it but it turned out I had no need for it. Well, at least it wasn't heavy.

All the performances were done on stage and most were by school children. The lights were the usual colourful stage lights, and though there were moments of dim lighting, in general I'd say the lights were bright enough for general shooting. But even then, I still had to occasionally push my ISO to 800 even when shooting at f/2.8. Having become more comfortable with my 135mm and more confident with the focusing, I decided to use it throughout. All were shot using available light, and while there were quite a number of less than well executed shots, I'm quite pleased with the shots I did manage to get.

Here are the picks of the bunch. Let me know which do you think is the shot of the night. See if I agree with you! :)

Action shots

I haven't gotten much practice in shooting moving subjects because most of the time, I'm either taking landscapes or slow-moving subjects. But yesterday, I decided to try out and practice some stop-action shots and some panning shots at the park (the light was ideal for this because it was really quite dark already). What did I learn? I learned that I have to have a great deal more practice.

The stop-action shots of my wife and daughter on the swing required me to time the shutter release just as the swing reached it's peak before moving to the other direction, when the swing would, for a very short moment, seem stationary. This was easier said than done! Out of the almost 10 shots I took, only 2 I deemed to be satisfactory. The rest were blurry and not the images that I intended to capture. Of course, the rather low-light levels didn't help either. I know I could have set my camera to continuous shooting, but I figured that wouldn't help me much in developing my sense of timing.

The panning shots were a rather similar affair. I had never really practised this, and the shots that seemed okay I thought were more chance than skill. So, perhaps more practice in this area is in order.

Festival of Hope

The Christmas concert organised by my church last night was a blast! Here are a few of the pics I took during the concert. The more arty ones were taken during the full-dress rehearsal the night before as I could move around more freely. As expected, light levels were very low and I had to push my camera's ISO much higher than I'm comfortable with (started with ISO 800 but normally worked with ISO 1100). I was probably being over-ambitious but I decided not to use flash and just tried to get my shots sharp.

Of course, all pics went through quite a bit of photoshopping to remove colour-cast, noise, and increase contrast and brightness. A number of the pics are not as sharp as I'd like them to be (due to noise reduction in photoshop, and I suspect, jittery hands due to the slow shutter speed), but I guess I have to live with that. I don't own a 70-200 f/2.8!

Unless of course, someone would generously buy me one...