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

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.

Facebook Photo Merge

A few months back, I read online (can't remember the site at the moment) about taking long exposure photographs of your computer monitor whilst scrolling through a series of photos within a Facebook album. Guess the idea is to somehow merge a few photos to give you the general theme of the album within one image.

Thought it was an interesting idea so had a quick go to see how it would turn out.

Here are some of my test shots. They are all made up of 2-3 photographs from the same Facebook album.









As usual, click the images to enlarge

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree!

So here we are again...Christmas time. Thought I'd better take the mandatory shot of the Christmas tree as I do every year! It's a big one this year - I swear it looked smaller when I bought it!

Just for a change, I took another shot with the camera still on the tripod and zoomed out during the exposure - It created a nice little effect.





As usual, click the images to enlarge

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!

The Darkness Descends

The nights are really starting to draw in now and will soon be dark when I go and come back from work (even after the clocks change).

Still, autumn is not all doom and gloom - with all the leaves falling from the trees the streets really are paved with gold (and brown, green, etc!)

Messing around the other night, I took some shots of these leaves which had landed on my decking covering some of the lights. Thought it was a bit different from the usual shots of autumn leaves.





As usual, click the images to enlarge.

Dark Religion

Came across a couple of night shots of Salisbury Cathedral on my computer.

They were taken around the same time as the Comic Relief Cathedral shots.

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.

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!

Pillar of the Community

With the ever declining trend of sending letters these days in favour of email and other digital forms of communication, I thought I'd photograph a pillar box before they are all taken away!

This was taken this evening at dusk. It was pretty dark so I used a 20 second exposure and an off camera flash.



Kept meaning to find more time to get out with the camera and tonight I finally did so look out for more posts from this evenings shoot coming soon.

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.

Light Painting

Following the fun I had with the fairy lights I've done some more light related shots.

This time with long exposure and a LED torch to create some light paintings.

Fairy Light Fun

Before storing the Christmas lights and decorations away in the loft for another year I decided to have some fun with my camera and a string of fairy lights lights.

Here are some of the results...

Seasons Greetings

I hope that you enjoyed a very good and relaxing Christmas. I had a good one although slightly over shadowed by a cold which materialised on Christmas afternoon and is still with me but going to try and subdued it a little with some alcohol tonight as I'm off for drinks round a friends place!

I have got another week off before heading back to work so will just have to make up for lost time :)

Here are a few festive shots...

Hoverman

After coming across this great work by ec808x on Flickr I have done a little experimenting with taking a long exposure shot whilst using another camera flash to silhouette myself.

It needs a lot more practice and a much larger working environment but here is my first shot using this method. Note the orange glow from the auto focus light!!

Light Junkie

I have always enjoyed experimenting with light in its different forms to see what effects you can capture. I spent some time playing around with the camera and using a laser pointer and a mobile phone as the light sources to see what I could produce.

Using a long exposure (generally around 15 seconds) here are some of the photos that I captured.

Using a mobile phone as the light source




Laser pointer going back and forth across stainless steel tea and coffee canisters




Laser pointer on wine glass



Outlining a garden chair with a laser pointer