My brother Noel recently got a beautiful new Nikon digital camera, and a couple of weeks ago, I went with him to try it out on some night shots at an old grain silo complex.
Why an old grain silo, you may ask?
Well, Noel and I both have a fascination with old, deteriorating buildings.... the eeriness and mystery of abandoned places. We shot at an old cemetery that night, too, but this grain silo was actually scarier!
Anyway, we tried a technique called light painting, where you leave the shutter open for minutes at a time and use a strobe (sometimes with a colored gel) to blast light onto selected areas of the scene... or put a gel over a flashlight and “paint†an area with light just as you would paint it with a brush!
You can create some really cool effects this way. Hereâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s my favorite of the shots Noel took that first night:
To get the blue light under the tin roof, Noel simply walked right into the shot and fired off a blue-gelled strobe several times – but because he never stayed still, his own image was never captured by the camera.
While Noel was busy doing the strobes, I took a red-gelled high-intensity flashlight and painted the long fill pipe that angles down from the silo -- so thatâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s my huge contribution to the shot, and I want full credit for it!
A week after we did this test run, Noel went to San Francisco for a few days and got some truly amazing night shots in the city, at some abandoned military sites in the Bay area, and at an old resort hotel out in the desert east of there. Hereâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s his Flickr page if youâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]d like to see:
http://flickr.com/photos/nkerns/
Has anyone else ever done special-effects photography? Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]d love to see your pictures!
Why an old grain silo, you may ask?
Anyway, we tried a technique called light painting, where you leave the shutter open for minutes at a time and use a strobe (sometimes with a colored gel) to blast light onto selected areas of the scene... or put a gel over a flashlight and “paint†an area with light just as you would paint it with a brush!
You can create some really cool effects this way. Hereâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s my favorite of the shots Noel took that first night:
To get the blue light under the tin roof, Noel simply walked right into the shot and fired off a blue-gelled strobe several times – but because he never stayed still, his own image was never captured by the camera.
While Noel was busy doing the strobes, I took a red-gelled high-intensity flashlight and painted the long fill pipe that angles down from the silo -- so thatâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s my huge contribution to the shot, and I want full credit for it!
A week after we did this test run, Noel went to San Francisco for a few days and got some truly amazing night shots in the city, at some abandoned military sites in the Bay area, and at an old resort hotel out in the desert east of there. Hereâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s his Flickr page if youâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]d like to see:
http://flickr.com/photos/nkerns/
Has anyone else ever done special-effects photography? Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]d love to see your pictures!