Fair Play

Took a quick trip to the annual Salisbury Charter Fair this evening.

Been meaning to take the camera down there for the past few years but never seemed to get around to it.

Here are a few shots from this evening.

As usual, click on the images to enlarge

Ring Light Reflections

I recently got some new ski goggles and thought I would do some more experimentation with my DIY LED ring light.

The double lens on the goggles didn't work too well as it created duplicates of the reflected LEDs which give the appearance of them being blurred so I also tried it out whilst wearing sunglasses.







Us usual, click on the images to enlarge.

Night Light Fun

I went out yesterday evening to do some night photography with Jez from jezwhitworth.co.uk. We had planned to do some night sky / lunar photography but as usual the British weather was a let down and it was over cast.

But, not ones to be beaten we still headed out with our kit to the Clarendon Palace Ruins just outside Salisbury.

Had a really enjoyable evening playing around with cameras, flashguns, torches and LED rings. We did most of the shots on Jez's camera so look forward to seeing how they turned out but here are a few that I did take.

This is me on the DIY LED ring and Jez light painting the flowers


Another shot with the DIY LED ring


A quick shot of the Cathedral captured from the lookout on the way back home


As usual, click on the images to enlarge

Light Painting - Behind The Scenes

I said back in my LED Lamp post that I would knock up a quick guide on how to create those types of images and as promised, here we are!

Before we get started, here are a few things that you'll need:-

-Camera :)

-Tripod - Not essential but if you haven't got one then you'll need to put the camera on a firm surface and make sure that it does not move between shots

-Subject matter (for this purposes of this guide, I used a Champagne bottle

-Torch or other light source

Right, now we can get started

1. Set up your shot with the elements that you want to include. I just went for the bottle with a plain black background.

2. With the room lights on, focus on your image (I just used auto focus). Once focused switch the lens to manual focus - This will stop it trying to focus once the lights are out.
Switch the camera to a long exposure mode. I used the camera in manual (M) and set it to bulb mode with the largest aperture.

3. Switch off the lights and take some shots while illuminating the subject matter with with your light source. I used a home made UV light as seen below.



Here is my image of the Champagne bottle lit by the UV light


(3 second exposure at f/4.5)

4. Right, with that shot in the bag you now can now take the light painting arty shot. I swirled my light around the bottle but you can do anything that you fancy.

Here is my image of the UV pointer swirling around the bottle


(2 second exposure at f/4.5)

5. You now have to combine the 2 images using your image editing software. There are various ways that you can do this but I followed the simple steps below...

-Open both the images in your preferred image editing software

-Copy the second image that was created (light painting one)

-Paste this as a new layer in the first image that was created

-Set the layer blending mode to Screen

This is basically it - You may want to make many other adjustments to the image but this is a simple guide to the fundamentals of creating this sort of merged light painting image.

Here is my final image



I hope I have been fairly clear in this tutorial and it all makes sense! If there are any glaring mistakes or you're having trouble following the steps then please comment and I will rectify / give you some pointers.

LED Lamp

Merging an old light source with a modern LED.

I created this image using a home made UV LED pointer and merging a couple of photos.



These types of shots are very quick and easy to do. I will post a quick guide on how to create these sort of images soon.

As usual, click on the image to enlarge (It looks a bit better too!).

Light Painting & Out Takes

I enjoy a bit of light painting and within this age of digital photography you can take shot after shot without worrying about the cost of developing etc

Here is a video containing a few light painting and long exposure photographs that I have taken and the large number of out takes created whilst shooting them!

Light Painting & Out Takes from Steve Murrell on Vimeo.

Oil Painting

Had an idea for a photo whilst cooking dinner last night....Mix some water with oil and see what patterns you can make.

I had some chilli oil laying around (as you do) so put some in to a glass and here are a few of the resulting pictures.





As usual, click on the images to enlarge.

Light Installation

I went along to the last viewing of Bruce Munro's light installation at Salisbury Cathedral.

This installation, made from 16,000 recycled bottles featured in the Cathedral's Cloisters. Each water-tower of bottles changed colour to choral music - Very soothing :)

Not too bad considering they were all taken hand held.











As usual, click the images to enlarge

Let There Be Light

I am currently giving my bathroom a new lease of life as it's one of the few rooms that I have never done anything with since buying the house. So far this project has included putting in a new (and much bigger) shower and enclosure, re-plastering and decoration.

Today was the day when the new lighting was put in. The old ceiling rose (and bare bulb) was removed to make way for some new down lights.

With lighting on the mind I thought the other day that I'd never taken a picture of a naked bulb so thought I'd give it a quick go! Here's how it turned out.



As usual, click the image to enlarge

Happy 2011

Happy New Year and hope that you all enjoyed the festive period. Lets hope that 2011 is a good one for all of us.

What better way to start the year than some seasonal light painting.

Amazing what you can do with a couple of £1 solar garden lights!!

Christmas Lights?

Here is a different way of capturing the local Christmas lights! These were taken using long exposure whilst driving past.

Salisbury Market Square


Salisbury Street


Wilton Christmas Tree


As usual, click the images to enlarge

Decking Light Trails

Whilst out in the back garden taking shots for The Darkness Descents post, I was playing around a bit and managed to capture these long exposure light trails of my decking lights!

Painting the Darkness

When looking at Google Analytics recently I noticed that I've been getting a lot of hits on my various light painting posts.

With this in mind and having just completed soldering up my new and improved LED ring light I thought I'd revisit this popular topic by playing around with a few shots.

I started simply by rolling the LED ring light along my bed.



This created quite a cool geometric pattern so I then started to play around a bit more.



Followed by going along the floor, up the wall and across the ceiling!



Then I ran out of ideas!!

I think I will revisit this but am thinking of getting hold of (or making) a wheel with LEDs attached as rolling the ring light along smoothly is pretty difficult. Anyway...watch this space.

By the way, if you fancy trying out some light painting and your camera has manual settings then you don't need to make anything. As I've shown before in this post you can just use a phone as your light source or any old torch etc. Below is a quick shot that I took using my iPhone.



As usual, click on the images to enlarge.

Shuffle Up and Deal

I have made an adaptation to my DIY macro-light which I used with the old Canon Powershot S2 to try out with my Canon Speedlite on the dSLR. I basically used a bigger bit of tin foil and added an elastic band!

I was just wondering what to test it out on when I saw a pack of cards on the side.

Here is a shot of my camera with the hi-tech device attached and the results of a couple of test shots. The second one really captures the action of the shuffle and the merging of the cards (click to enlarge as always).

Light Drink

In place of a decent fact filled post (I've been busy!) here is another shot from my archives.

This one is of my bedside reading lamp!

State of the Union

Another photo from my archives. Taken using the macro light

Cathedral Light Trails

Following on my obsession with light thought I would post another light trail picture.

Took this one a few months back but stumbled across it this evening whilst looking for something else.

Zoom Zoom Zoom

Having another quick comparison between Flickr and Zooomr for photo views & stats. An earlier post on this subject can be found here.

The photo below was posted to both Flickr and Zooomr on 10 September 2008. So after one year, how do the stats compare.

Flickr Stats
Views: 153
Favorite: 5

Zooomr Stats
Views: 1275
Favorite: 29

As you can see, Zooomr still generates more interest in my photography and this picture is currently listed as my most awesome shot on Zooomr.

So Good They Named it Twice

On my way back home the other night I passed the Church of St Mary and St Nicholas in Wilton. I had my camera in the car so decided to stop and take a couple of night shots.

I always notice this striking structure when passing through Wilton, especially at night when it is illuminated.



Along the same themes as one of my recent posts, I also caught shot of the Nissan parked outside the church with streaming light trails of a passing car.


Out Take
During one of the long exposure shots, I had to move the camera and tripod to allow a car to pass down the driveway that I way blocking. The resulting image looks to me like a light painting of cyclists....possibly on a tandem!

More Light Painting

Following on from my previous post on light painting I was messing around and decided to try some writing and outlining to see how it would turn out.

These were both created using an LED torch with 10 second exposure for the writing and 36 seconds for the outlining of the sofa.