Primrose Hill, Sissinghurst Castle

Primrose Hill, Sissinghurst Castle, a photo by flatworldsedge on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Completely non-seasonal, I know, but it's a shot I've been meaning to post for ages. There's a sound argument that it's overexposed in places, but I was messing about with a flash and wanted to push the drama as hard as possible.

Info for Strobist:

There's a single Canon 600EX-RT fired with Comtrig RT trigger, on around 1/32 power - it's placed right behind (pretty much in) the clump of primroses, face left across the camera.

Swanage Coastal Laser Defence Station, Isle Of Purbeck

Swanage Coastal Laser Defence Station, Isle Of Purbeck, a photo by flatworldsedge on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
This is my first try at zooming during an exposure - it's a 24mm to 105mm zoom right at the end. Obviously the effect is all in camera. It's one I'll definitely try to use again.

Hope everyone is having a fantastic week.

Hard Light (Central Park Zoo Icicles), NYC

Hard Light (Central Park Zoo Icicles), NYC, a photo by flatworldsedge on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Hard winter sun on icicles and waterfall in Central Park Children's Zoo. I've got heaps of photos to process from NYC back in February, but this one stuck out on a recent archive tour - with the change in weather I can feel winter just around the corner now.

I thought it might be fun to post something safe and travel after a few weeks of experimental light shots!

Hope everyone is having a fantastic start to the week.

Witchcraft (Katherine Velours Witch With Lightpainting), Shrubhill Common

Witchcraft (Katherine Velours Witch With Lightpainting), Shrubhill Common, a photo by flatworldsedge on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
This is an experiment from my second shoot with Katherine Velours.

It's a mix of softbox lit portrait, with blue and red gelled flashlights used to lightpaint in the colours and the spell she's casting.

Unfortunately a second strobe in an umbrella camera left didn't fire on this frame - at once flattening the light on her face, but making for a darker more mysterious atmosphere.

There is some Photoshop here, but only to clean things up - chiefly the blue behind the tree which had badly clipped. There's a crop too. The starburst/fireball/magical energy/etc. is all in camera.

I'm hoping to do more of this hybrid work, mixing the lightpainting with model shoots. Certainly it's a lot harder than I thought, so thanks Katherine for all the patience as we worked things out!

Hope everyone is having a great week.

Beauty & The Beast (In Camera Lightpainting), Terme Topolšica

Beauty & The Beast (In Camera Lightpainting), Terme Topolšica, a photo by flatworldsedge on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Please see the SOOC version in the comments below - there's some photoshop in the image above - all the lines are 100% in camera, but I did have to remove ghosts of me doing the painting.

This was the first of my recent Slovenia lightpainting series. I'd gone out for a stroll with the camera in the evening, and liked the backlit scene in this park next to the Hotel Vesna where we were staying. The trees are oddly wrapped in knitted garments, and there was a neat central European vibe to the distant building. Especially when I put the camera on the grass amongst the fallen leaves, it had the feel of being outside an archduke's palace, with drifting strains of the ball barely audible over the whisper of the night.

The scene needed something to bring that to life, hence my first lightpainting in a year or so.

Like a couple of others in the series that followed, I wasn't suitably attired - and so, especially with light spill from using a sock as a diffuser on my torch, you'll see below that I made it into shot. Removing me was a nightmare - using source data from a blank "no lightpainting" image taken afterwards, then using the brush tool at varying sizes and opacities to blend in the flare. Not perfect, but good enough to my eye.

I hope everyone's well and having a fantastic weekend.