Ghosts in the night

Sorry I have been away from the blog for a few days, I get emails when nothing appears here – you know who you are! I’m just glad that some people are interested in what I do.

Most of this week has been taken up with my education clients, I’m working on the photography for a University Prospectus at the moment, this is quite a responsible job, the Prospectus is the main document to entice students to a University and as such it is important that the imagery is of a very high standard. It is fair to say I was absolutely delighted to be chosen as the preferred Photographer for this prestigious job.

I cant mention the University or feature any of the images at the moment as the design is confidential, I am very hopeful that I will be able to feature some of the images here in a month or so as well as the cover of the Prospectus. As I have mentioned before, Education organisations, rightly have a duty to protect their students and all of the images taken this week feature students so I cant publish them without both their permission and that of the University, I hope that this will be granted soon. However, if any clients would like to discuss this in detail, I can show you the images and tell you more about it privately.  I have over 500 images selected from the many more that were shot and I now have the enviable (!) task of processing and cropping them all.

This evening I noticed some snow ball sculptures in the field where I walk the dogs, I thought they might make an interesting night photography exercise so I dragged Susan along this evening with my tripod, camera and flash to shoot these sculptures. I was disappointed to find that some kids had knocked over the interesting shaped ones leaving only a couple of snow balls. As we had plodded through the snow with camera gear we shot a couple of frames.

This was the first attempt – not very successful. What I did was put the camera on a tripod, leave the shutter open using the B facility then run round the field like a mad thing with my flash gun lighting things as I went. You can see the large snow ball in the foreground, then you can see Susan and I in the middle of the frame, I need more light on us. Right at the back (you’ll need to click it to make it bigger) you’ll see another snow ball lit with the torch.

 

This is slightly better, the snow ball is lit well, you can see the dogs to the right but they moved during the exposure so they are a little blurry – don't know why they wont stay still!

So, that’s called painting with light, I sometimes use this technique to light large offices, you should see the look on the peoples faces, me running about like a nutter with a flash gun. Interestingly, the word Photography comes from the Greek, and is translated as Painting with light – Photo for light and Graphy for painting.

You always learn things reading my blog !!!!