I only have three images to talk about in this post. I normally write a blog with anything from 6 to 10 images but I find it's not easy to produce that many "new" images for a post. It would be easy to post these to regular social media but Hive is still my preferred place to actually describe the images.
So if posting only three images means I gain less of a Hive reward, then so be it!
I've been loving photography lately with my new Sony 14mm G Master lens. This thing is so sharp and the results I've been getting have made me wonder why I never bought one till now!
The Beast of Bellmount Tower
I saw an Instagram post with a curious looking tower seemingly in the middle of nowhere; right up my street. I did a little research and found it was only 40 miles or so away from me. Bellmount Tower is a historic tower, dating to the 18th-century, located near Belton Park, Belton, Lincolnshire, England. It is a grade II* listed building. It was commissioned by John Brownlow, 1st Viscount Tyrconnel as one of several buildings on the Belton estate.
Here I set up a Godox AD200 at the rear of the frame located on a light stand which I could trigger remotely (I was alone for this session). I also set up two small RGB LED lights either side of the tower on a very low power so as not to overexpose the brickwork. The idea was for me to stand in the frame acting as the beast and firing the flash during a 30 second exposure to let the sky burn in a little. I ended up using 20 seconds and having to run back in to frame because my Sony remote was too far away!
It's much easier to do this kind of shot with someone else to help so it's a miracle I managed to capture this! Getting the smoke to behave itself is like herding cats!
Bellmount Tower star trails
We haven't had clear skies in my area for what seems like months. After I knocked off the above shot I decided to set up a "short" star trail sequence going.
First I spent ages lining up Polaris aka The North Star on the top right third of the frame and it seems I got lucky with the overhanging branches appearing to "point" towards Polaris.
I then shot a base frame with subtle lighting on the outside of the tower and a pop of flash on the inside. Once happy with the base frame I set the sequence going. In this case, the sequence consisted of 90 frames of 30 seconds each with a one second interval between each frame.
It can get quite boring waiting for 45 minutes for the sequence to finish so it was great that there was a 5G signal to while away the time on the internet!!
North Leverton Wiindmill under the stars
I've shot this windmill quite a few times before and it's probably something of an obsession. With the new 14mm lens I wanted to shoot a star trail with Polaris more or less on the fan tail of the windmill.
I shot 180 images of 30 seconds each for the sequence. Back on the computer to process this batch, I found that 37 of the images were fogged over and unusable. I settled for the remaining frames and binned the 37.
To stack images like this, I open all the images as a "stack" in Photoshop and select Lighten Blend mode. I then switch off all the layers only switching on layers on my hunt to clone out the plane trails! The plane trail removal takes quite a while and it's probably recommended not to shoot star trails near an airport!!
About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in urbex and artistic model photography. I'm always on the lookout for someone to collaborate with; please don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to create art.
Social Media
https://www.facebook.com/fastchrisuk
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fastchris/
Lightpainting is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source while taking a long exposure photograph, either to illuminate a subject or to shine a point of light directly at the camera, or by moving the camera itself during exposure. Nothing is added or removed in post processing.
If you would like to see more lightpainting please give the Lightpainters United Community a follow and you will be introduced into the illuminating world of light painting!
If you want to see more examples of lightpainting, feel free to check out these guys:
Mafu Fuma | Oddballgraphics | FadetoBlack | DAWN | Mart Barras | Stefan Stepke | Nikolay Trebukhin | Lee Todd | Stabeu Light | Maxime Pateau | Stephen Sampson | lightandlense | Neil Rushby | L.A.C.E.
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