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.

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!

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.

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.

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