gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Shot in the dark

Last weekend I attended a photography "playshop" called Shot in the Dark (run by Rob Kennedy), exploring different ways to play with light in low light and night photos. Though not all the tricks are techniques you'd use regularly, it was a hoot to mess around with long exposures.

One of the techniques is "light painting" your subject matter with a flashlight to illuminate otherwise dark features, or create weird glowing effects like this wagon wheel below. Using a 20 second exposure (w. tripod and cable release) I walked beside the camera and shone a flashlight around the rim and in the centre. Interesting effect, though not particularly natural in this case.

Sure, you can alter images in Photshop, but it's not nearly as fun as waving a flashlight around in a dark barn.

You canbe more subtle, of course. Here's an old wooden boat being stored in the barn. There was almost no direct light on it, and the light leaking through the barn wood was much brighter. But a flashlight "painting"of the bow and stern of the boat brings out the definition:

Or you can make some nice, spooky effects - here's a small barn that I "painted" with a flashlight in different ways (left, it was in complete dark - you can see I missed a few spots with the flashlight; in the right image there was a bit of light from another building, so I just painted the doorway - looks like something evil is hatching in there, no?)

We also messed around with lighting up trees, shooting car tail lights, the moon rising, etc. Good fun. More images can be found on my Flickr set.

Next week: Skies.