Colour Overload - RHS Wisley Glow 2020

 We got to visit the Wisley Glow event this year (just at the end of lockdown), and having been to a few others in the last few years, this was no disappointment.  None of the tacky Santa and Reindeer stuff that was a huge part of Kew one year, but plenty of changing light patterns, repetitive music etc.  Quite crowded, with many small children, a one-way system and ropes everywhere, so a healthy dose of patience required........I am not selling it to you am I?!?  It was a welcome distraction from the never ending lockdown though.

It's been a very quiet year for Catchlight 35, not surprisingly with the pandemic, and quite hard in all sorts of other ways too that no-one had expected for many people.

So dust off that camera, out with the tripod, turn down the ISO and use remote trigger for varying long exposures.  After that, shoot to stack and lose the people!  I think the minimum exposure time for any of my shots was 6 seconds, but mostly they were 13 to 30 seconds or more.  You need a relatively windless day so I was lucky.  Enjoy.

This is lit with my own torch for the statue in the foreground - most people may have missed this since it was pitch black just here.

This is a stack of around 8 shots, for different lights on the trees/balls and needing different exposures depending on the colour of the lights.  It is beautiful just to stand there and watch the colours change, but you only get the full impact in a photo with a stack.

I have only put a few here, but you get the idea.  Then there are the ones you took by mistake when moving the camera.......

OOPS!  Very abstract.......!

This is what happens when its dark and you either press the shutter by mistake or you touch the touchscreen on the camera (more likely, having forgotten to switch off touch ability) whilst picking up the tripod to move on.

Tips:

As I've said before in an earlier blog, the dark is your enemy when trying not to lose any bits of kit so have a load of big pockets to drop lens caps/hoods/batteries etc into.  Hopefully you'll find everything at the end. 

Avoid tripping up small children, or them tripping you up...

AND KEEP WARM!

P.S  Then there's the overlay experiment....double exposure.  Hmm......

Painting With Light Landscapes

I've always loved this.  It's different on every outing and there's just no set way of going about it - it's predominently trial and error.  There are two ways of approaching it:

1. Take plenty of images from the tripod, each with different parts of the scene lit up in the way you want them. Blend after in Phtoshop.  Pros: You have more time in each image to get it right without worrying about the exposure being too short.  Cons: Some parts of your scene may overlap and this makes it hard to blend afterwards in Photoshop.  It works for some scenes and not others.

2. Aim to get the image perfect right out of the camera.  Pros: Almost no post processing.  Cons: You may never get the perfect shot and you won't realise until you get home.

      Nikon D90   35mm   f8  2mins 30 secs   ISO 200  and powerful torch.

What is most fascinating is what the eye doesn't see but the camera does.  The image above was taken in the pitch dark at midnight on Bookham Common with a torch.  The reason for the sky being a bizarre colour is because there is full cloud cover and clouds reflect the lights of nearby towns, presumably in this case Cobham, sending them into oranges and reds/pinks depending on the height of them and reflecting nicely in the pond.

You can use any kind of lighting that you have to hand, but in the case of this landscape I needed an exceptionally powerful torch.  As with the inverse square law, the further away the subject, the more lighting power is required, and part of the guesswork with these images is judging how much time to leave the torch on different parts of the scene in order to keep it evenly lit.  This is something you can only learn by experience.  This image is straight out of the camera.

Technique:
1.  Use a tripod and some lights (torch, flashguns etc)

2.  Use the torch to prefocus the lens in auto focus, then switch the lens to manual focus to prevent it trying to refocus when you open the shutter.

3.  Set your aperture according to depth of field required.

4.  In Bulb mode shoot one or two (or as many as you need) without any light to gauge the ambient lighting. This will vary enormously depending on moonlight, cloud cover, nearby towns, any man made lighting in the scene.  Now you have your shutter exposure time.

5.  Use either a cable release or remote shutter release to prevent camera shake.  I use a Hahnel Giga T Pro II  as I can then set the exact length of time I want the shutter open and it will close automatically.  The trouble with remotes or cable releases is that you need to return to the camera to close the shutter, and that's not as easy as it sounds if you are out in the black of night and have moved somewhere else in order to light the scene.  It's suddenly quite hard to find your tripod at all - why are they nearly all black??!!   Obviously you can't use a torch to find it, or the camera will "see" you.

6.  Wear dark clothes and keep moving if in view of the camera and then it won't see you.

Nikon D90  35mm   f13  ISO 200     61 secs

This is one of my earlier experiments.  Not quite dark, I had very little time to run round and shine my torch from the top of each headstone.  Not expertly done either, but not a bad attempt.

7.  If at all possible choose the right weather - even a very slight breeze will cause the trees to move in the long exposures, so pick a still night or a static subject.

       Nikon D90  18mm   f11    124 secs  ISO 100   torch

With this length of exposure, the clouds move, often giving interesting images.

      Nikon D90   13mm   f8   59 secs    ISO 200    torch

       Nikon D90  18mm    f8   192 secs   ISO 200   Torch

      Nikon D90  18mm   f7.1   20secs  ISO 200    torch and flashgun

Normandy WW2 Gun emplacement on the cliffs - The moonlight in this one was very bright.  I used a combination of the torch and hand held flashgun (you can tell by the shadow of the gun barrel that there were two light sources)  as there was not enough time otherwise.

Other things to note:
Don't put any of your equiment down anywhere, you may not find it again.......or you may tread on it!
Preferably take a friend with you for safety and let someone know where you're going.

As you may have guessed, I usually pick the second of the two approaches trying to shoot the perfect image straight out of the camera.
Above all stay safe and have some fun with it!