Astro Visual Photography

I’d never been to a rodeo before (or since at time of writing) but figured it might be something different to experience. It was. Lots of action to shoot. One of the events was Barrel Racing and after taking many shots I decided to get a bit more specific.

Barrel Racing on Horse Back

OBJECTIVE:

To show the strength of the horse and that strength in action.

COMPOSITION:

As the horses make the turns they must slow up abruptly, and then accelerate away again. The sand flying caught my attention and I chose to try to catch that. This turned out to be quite difficult as the barrel was quite close to me so framing the horse as I wanted was a tough job.
I wanted to show the horses legs and chest muscles if I could and I don’t mind saying that it took plenty of shots to get one I was happy with.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/3200th – f5 – ISO 640. 100mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Hand held. No Flash. Overcast day.
I would have liked to use a flash for fill, but no one else was, and there were plenty of cameras around. I figured it must disturb the horses so I decided I better be polite and shoot without it.

POST PROCESSING:

Slight sharpening, and minimal curves/levels to increase contrast.

END RESULT:

The final composition isn’t exactly what I’d hoped this time. I’d rather have the horse a bit further down the frame but I can live with it. The 1/3200th shutter stopped the action well enough and the sand helped to hide any noise the high ISO might have introduced.

Meet Brooke. Brooke is a friend of my daughters and she enjoys modeling. We needed Brooke for an environmental shoot for a website that required photos of office workers and also wanted to provide her with some shots for her portfolio.

The Secretary

OBJECTIVE:

To show a secretary in her environment but feature the model. I didn’t want her lost in among the various props.

COMPOSITION:

We did various shots with Brooke, and my daughter who does some modeling as well. This particular shot was the ‘talking on the phone’ shot.

We were using our own office for this and it has several large windows with vertical blinds which are very handy for directing ambient light. The light helped me to decide what position to place Brooke in.
We tried a few with the computer monitor behind her but found it all a bit busy.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/200th – f2.8 – ISO 320. 60mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Hand held. Flash. Light from the Vertical Blinds.
I used the Ext flash mounted on the camera here as wanted her face and eyes bright.

POST PROCESSING:

Sharpening, curves/levels to increase contrast. I then applied a strong glamour blur to give a soft feel to this shot but selectively brought through the features I wanted sharp such as her beautiful blue eyes.

END RESULT:

The light from the vertical blinds has done a great job of giving life to areas that the front on flash would have left darker. We can distinctly see there are at least 2 strong sources of light in this photo which is what we wanted.
My external flash has filled in the facial features well without being too strong, and has brought those blue eyes well and truly into the limelight.
The post processing has softened Brooke’s skin although her skin is quite smooth as it is. The softened skin fits well with the softness created around her and in the background though.
There is a bit of shadow on the wall from the light sources but using a low flash setting has at least reduced that to something which is not distracting.

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.