If you follow this blog, you know that one of my current personal projects involves the technique of light painting.
I love the mood one can produce using light painting, and I’ve been exploring a number of subjects and locations. Since I usually only light a bit of the scene at once and must therefore combine a series of shots in Photoshop, I cannot really see the final result on the back of the camera. I therefore need to develop some intuition about the technique and be able to visualise the final result and how to light the scene to get what I want.
Louise is a professional cello player, but also likes to play the musical saw. I usually asked the people with whom I collaborate if there is a particular location where they would like to be photographed. Louise suggested an old tree in Cramond with amazing roots. It looked great during the day, but when we got there at night, the chosen location posed too many practical problems and we had to resort to plan B.
After walking around for a while, we found the Cramond Gallery Bistro in the picture above. It didn’t take me long to decide this would likely be a wonderful background.
We had time for another location, and I was drawn to the door and statues on the floor in the picture above. It was not easy to frame the picture in complete darkness, and I realised it would have been a good idea to take some additional lighting for this purpose. I learn something new every time….
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