I friend of mine showed me some LED orbs he created the other day, and we decide to go out and shoot some more. The shot above was a 2 minute exposure, involving myself and chops to create the 3 LED Orbs. I’m still experimenting and I’m hoping to have a shot not to far away that has 4 orbs of different colors soon, including a “split orb”. Once I’ve “mastered” the technique I’m going to post an article on how you can create your own cool orbs.
More Orbs can be viewed at my flickr page, link below.
The weather over the past few days has been wet and cloudy. So rather that go out to shoot I’ve been playing with Lightroom. I’ve spent some time going back over the past few years to find those shots that are not “keepers”, but very close to see if Lightroom can do some magic to get it over the line.
While in New Zealand last year I took some shots of Lake Waktipu ( Queenstown ). The amount of stars visible is amazing, The above shot would have been perfect with less cloud and maybe an ND Grad over the stars with a slightly longer exposure to bring out the lake and mountains. However Lightroom has done a fairly good job to recover some details.
Recently while away for work I had the pleasure of visiting a few new country’s, and I’d just like to encourage any readers of this Blog to always take the time to incorporate some photography into their trip, not just the tourist shots, but taking time to return to a nice spot or setting aside some time to shoot a particular event or location in detail.
Schedules are always tight when traveling, but I have found some of the better shots I’ve taken while away, like most good shots are the planned ones. Shots where preparation and time has been taken with a clear goal in mind, not just a shot from a moving tour bus.
Take the time, even if your exhausted, looking back you won’t regret it.
I think one of the important things that has worked for me in the past in capturing interesting pictures is the location and sometimes risk I’ve had to place my camera in to get them.
For example the above shot was taken while sitting my camera on the curb (in a bicycle Lane) alongside busy traffic in the middle of Melbourne. In the same outing I also lost a lens hood into the river while precariously balancing my Camera on the edge of a bridge to capture a Melbourne Night Scene.
It can probably be said that a good picture involves risk, something new, something different. So why not use the same philosophy when capturing the picture.
Stick your tripod in the water, use the fact that your camera has weatherproof seals. See your camera as a tool, built to do a job. Your camera is most likely depreciating at a huge rate, so you mite as well get some good use out of it.
Sure don’t take unnecessary risks, but don’t be scared to get a scratch on your camera, after all why do you have your camera?
P.S. Don’t worry Paul, I’m taking real good care of your baby
I’m currently in the process of creating a Blurb book, and I’ve decided to use this image as the last one in the book.
This image was taken about 9 months ago at Mayfield Bay Coastal Reserve, just south of Swansea.
It was taken at night with moonlight and campfire glow and it’s a 30 second exposure. It’s quite grainy and I’m not sure how well it will print above 8×10″. If the results are good I guess I’ll add it to the store. Because of the moonlight and campfine glow I think this looks great as a sepia.
I’ve been playing about with long exposures recently, although I haven’t had the time to go out and take some more “formal” shots, I took this one locally recently. It’s a 17 min exposure, f5.6. Unfortunately with the cold weather (winter) the sky was a little hazy, which washed the stars out a little.
As past of my experiments into long exposures it became quite obvious that I needed a few new toys, an external timer and shutter release, which I got cheaply on eBay, and an easy method for calculating the correct exposure length. Solution: I made my own handheld exposure “computer”. Details on this can be found in the Long Exposure Tutorial.
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