Astro Visual Photography

These colourful parrots called Rainbow Lorikeets are regular visitors to our area. I dug in a couple of logs in my backyard and sprinkled some wild bird seeds around and every once in a while, one will come down feed.

Rainbow Lorikeet

OBJECTIVE:

My objective was to show the lorikeet on the log and try to not have the nearby fence interfere with the main subjects.

COMPOSITION:

I wanted to show the bird clearly but also make it clear what he was standing on as well. Being that the log and the bird are taller than they are wider I went for the portrait orientation. The good old Rule of Thirds was well and truly tossed out the window here. I will use Rule of Thirds but only when the composition doesn’t simply strike me naturally.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/640th – f10 – ISO 500. 400mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Tripod. Flash. Early morning light which was low and creating shadows.
I used the flash here as wanted to lighten up the shadows and get the birds face as bright as possible.

POST PROCESSING:

Sharpening, curves/levels to increase contrast, cropped to create the composition as I couldn’t get in close enough to create it in camera.

END RESULT:

My external flash did a good job of filling in the shadows over that distance. This was necessary because the early sun was really creating strong dark areas. Shooting and cropping in portrait orientation allowed me show the lorikeet up on his ‘throne’ and even include a shoot of grass seeds that have sprouted up from seed the birds have missed.
The long zoom (focal length) of 400mm did a good job of blurring the fence even though I used an f-stop that creates a reasonable amount of depth of field.
The shadows still remain enough so I haven’t lost too much texture to the flash, and weren’t lessened to the extent where the early light lost it’s impact.

Black and white photos have never been a forte of mine but occasionally I manage to get something half decent I think. A 35mm camera my father was given in 1958 as a 21st birthday present looked like a nice subject.

Agfa Stilette in Black and White

OBJECTIVE:

My objective here was to capture this old Agfa Stiletto camera using only the available ambient light and try to create something that looked old and from photography’s pre-digital past. Seeing as the camera is indeed very old, complete with pitting from the wear of time, and in it’s original leather case, I shouldn’t have had to work very hard.

COMPOSITION:

The composition was partly decided after decided where I was going to take the photo and what light I was using. The location was simply the kitchen table and the light sources were the nearby windows which I controlled using the vertical blinds on them.
I examined the camera and chose to take this from a low angle and from one side as I thought it would be cool to see the aperture numbers and various text on the lens visible and fading into shadow.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/10th – f16 – ISO 160. 56mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Tripod. No flash. Ambient light from nearby windows.

POST PROCESSING:

Sharpening, converted to B&W, curves/levels to increase contrast.

END RESULT:

In the end I got a shot that is heavily weighted to the dark side but with strong highlights. The result is you can immediately see what this is but the weaker, mid range detail is there and draws you into looking closer to find more elements than were immediately obvious.

Sometimes using flash to light a subject at night doesn’t give the effect you are looking for. Using multiple flashes from different angles can create some cool lighting but often textures and feeling are lost. Light painting is an alternative that can produce some lovely subtle results, or even very directed effects, depending on how you apply it.

Light Painting A Shipwreck

OBJECTIVE:

My objective was to capture this shipwreck using the light painting technique in order to allow me to tailor the lights impact with more delicacy than a flash would allow.

COMPOSITION:

The wreck is right on the shoreline next to a cliff. At high tide it is surrounded by water but at low tide it is high and dry. I chose low tide in order to be able to get down close to the wreck. I had hoped for a strong sunset as well but didn’t get that. The glow of the city of Brisbane and what glow the sunset did give me was enough to make me decide to find an angle that showed part of the cliff and the those city/sunset elements in the background as well.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

30 secs – f13 – ISO 200. 17mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Tripod. No flash. Two, very strong LED light setups. For those into LED, these are 3x 3watt Crees giving out a combined lumen of around 600 I think from memory? So, while the shutter was open, I simply ‘painted’ with my lights.

POST PROCESSING:

Slight sharpening, colour saturation, curves/levels to increase contrast.

END RESULT:

The end result is the textures of the ship have not been flattened by a harsh flash, and shadows remain in areas that are important. I was also able to create a luminescent area of light around the ship on the sand. The long exposure caught the city and sunset well also but an extra bonus I didn’t expect, was the inclusion of several stars as well.

We see lots of shots of flowers, and as pretty as they are, the same old same old looking shots get a bit monotonous I reckon.

The Flower

OBJECTIVE:

I saw this small Royal Poinciana tree while walking a dog and was taken with the bright colours of the flowers in the vivid background of the greens. I immediately vowed to return with the camera and see if I could capture the beauty of the flowers.
When I did return it was late afternoon and the sun was streaming in from low in the sky which lit the flower up in some areas but created shadows in others. I decided to try to use some extra lighting to create something different here.

COMPOSITION:

The original photo is not as close as this as I don’t have close up filters or lenses. The composition we see here is from a crop in post processing. I did this to enhance the curvature of the flower over it’s stamen and feature the highlights from the lighting.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/400 – f10 – ISO 200. 70mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Handheld. Ext Flash on the camera and another ext flash handheld.
It was a bit tricky shooting this one handed while holding a flash off to the side and down low to create backlighting but that’s what I did. The sun was lighting up the flower from the top quite well so I set the on camera flash to very low. I only wanted it to trigger the slave flash in my left hand.

I chose to use f10 because I wanted to try to get as much of the flower itself in focus. Being zoomed in to the max for the lens I was using (a 24-70mm) meant I would lose a lot of that depth of field I wanted.

POST PROCESSING:

Some selective sharpening on the white section and stamen ends. Cropping to create the composition from a larger version.

END RESULT:

The result is pleasing for me as the slave flash has created a bright, lime coloured bokeh (out of focus background) that otherwise would have been dark. The low angle of the slave flash also created highlights on the stamen stalks and under the main petal that the sun wasn’t finding. This brought out the texture very well that the on camera flash would have flattened.

Sometimes your eye tells you there’s a good photo in front of you but when you take the shot it just doesn’t have anything special about it. You know the scene looked good to your eye but your photo isn’t reflecting that. What do you do?

A Different View

OBJECTIVE:

As I described above, I was just walking along this boardwalk and my eyes told me there was a nice photo here. As I framed the shot I realized that what I was seeing in the viewfinder was not going to result in a photo worth keeping. I needed to figure out what my eyes had seen and how to capture it.

COMPOSITION:

In this situation, where the subject/scene is something mundane, I ask myself how I can make the shot different from what I’ve seen most often. I think about the view my feet or knees have (if they had eyes too) and look for angles that I don’t remember seeing at all, or at least very often, in other photos.

I chose a section with a slight curve in it (our eyes like curves quite often) and decided to use the view my feet were enjoying and step a little to my right so the view wasn’t too centered.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/80th – f2.8 – ISO 200. 24mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Handheld. No flash.

POST PROCESSING:

Small amount of sharpening. A blur technique applied.

END RESULT:

The end result is a shot our eyes never usually see at all … unless we fall over. And then usually don’t take a moment to enjoy the view anyhow.
By using the curve of the boardwalk, and being slightly off-center, the photo has strong leading lines (the side railings and boardwalk itself) which lead our eye through the photo as we wonder where it’s going.