Astro Visual Photography

Walking through a rain-forest early last year I looked up and saw an almost abstract image above me.

Backlighting in the Canopy

OBJECTIVE:

Simple this time. I just wanted to reproduce what I could see … the yellow/greens of the light passing through the leaves of the trees and plants high above me in the rain-forest.

COMPOSITION:

The composition is simple . I just zoomed around until I found a spot that had a few elements in it I liked. Several different leaves and shadows with plenty of bright back lighting to create the vivid colour and silhouettes. This one appealed because of the dark corners at the bottom left and top right which helped contrast the green/yellows.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/640th – f6.3 – ISO 640. 320mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Hand held. No Flash.
I chose my longer zoom lens in order to get in close to the canopy some 30 metres above me.
It was quite dark in the rain-forest but I wanted to use a mid range f-stop to create a reasonable depth of field. Because I was zoomed well in AND shooting almost directly above my head I also wanted a fast shutter speed to help get some sharpness so I cranked the ISO up to 640. Being a fairly busy scene I was hoping any noise would not be apparent.

POST PROCESSING:

Again, nothing I remember. I may have saturated the colour slightly but that’s all.

END RESULT:

I got what wanted. Strong, contrasting blacks for the bright, leaves and obvious shadows.

Sometimes when it’s cold and wet outside, or I simply can’t think of a good location I can be bothered with, I look around the house for something to photograph. I found this big teddy bear staring at me from the corner of the bedroom and decided to try something I’d seen done.

Light Painted Teddy Bear

OBJECTIVE:

I’d seen objects lit up with various lighting sources using long exposures so I wanted to try to get some cool result using that method. This bear (which stands about 1 metre or 3 foot tall) is totally white so I figured he’d make a good subject.

COMPOSITION:

The composition is simple as I was just trying to learn this technique. I simply placed Yogi there on a black bar chair (seeing as black doesn’t reflect so well) and that was about it. How he sat was what I had in terms of composition.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

20 secs – f20.0 – ISO 100. 32mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Tripod. No Flash.
This was at night so darkness wasn’t an issue. The ISO of 100 was chosen to help reduce any noise from the long exposure.
To shoot this I first focused on Boo Boo with the light on and using manual focus.
For the lighting I used a red (has an orange strip as well) rear bike light, just the usual LED type you get these days in a decent bike shop. I set that to on solid, not flash. I then simply traced around the outside of the bear while using the camera timer. I could have just  used the bulb setting and walked over in the dark to turn it off but figured a timer can do that for me and I won’t trip over anything that way.

POST PROCESSING:

Nothing I remember. I may have saturated the colour slightly but that’s all.

END RESULT:

I think I got a cool result with the light creating some strong shadows in the bears fur and the light ‘trace’ forming a frame around him. Something different to play with anyhow.

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.

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 it’s the mood or feeling we want to portray in our photo. Depending on what that mood is, we employ many different techniques.

Romance

OBJECTIVE:

It was a February and the forum I was regular to had a theme for the month of ‘Love, Romance, and Red’ so I created this shot to fulfill those requirements.

OBSERVATIONS:

Looking around the house I found some engagement glasses my wife and I were given and thought of the basic concept we see in the photo. Digging around a bit more, including my wife’s jewelery box, I saw the string of pearls. The scented, mood candle was often out on the coffee table so I put all these things together.

COMPOSITION:

I wanted the candle to be a feature but the hands, ring and glasses were more important to me. I usually steer away from centered, symmetrical type compositions but in this case I felt it might work ok.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/4th – f5.6 – ISO 320. 50mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Tripod. Spot metering.
The candle was throwing enough light from behind to illuminate the glasses in a subtle manner that befitted the mood I wanted to portray. However, with no light from a forward angle, the hands were dark and needed some light on them as well.

Obviously a flash would do that but it would have ruined the mood by lighting up too much. Diffusing the flash may have produced something close to suitable but I went for something more specific. I used two tiny LED lights for cycling. These are like the ones you see on keyrings etc. A single LED, not very bright at all.
The LED’s were then aimed at the ring finger on my hand and the thumb on my wife’s hand.

As people are not very good at being perfectly still for very long at all I bumped the ISO up a little so I could try to speed the shutter up a bit to avoid movement causing blur. A rule of thumb is that you can’t expect a person to be still long enough to even go under about 1/60th. However, in this case I was only shooting hands and they were resting on the coffee table so I decided I could get away with the 1/4th I used.

POST PROCESSING:

A slight sharpening, curves/levels adjustment.

END RESULT:

If I was more serious with this shot I would have done some more processing to make the LED lights a bit more yellow I think. Or placed some yellow cellophane in front of the LEDs to cast more yellow.

The wide aperture of f5.6 created a narrow depth of field (area in focus) that kept the hands and glasses in focus but created enough blur to allow the pearls and candle to still be recognizable but not be distracting.

Thanks for coming.