You can transform your favourite photographic locations easily by shooting at night and painting with flash
Dark nights away from stray ambient light can make for some dramatic imagery. Try taking your tripod out on a late night and paint a location with your flash, illuminating it to create shadows and highlights that will result in incredible effects. This guide will show you some common mistakes and take you through how to capture the perfect flash painted shot.
On these warm summer nights its worth staying out late, taking your ashgun along to some of your favourite photographic haunts and painting with ash. Its a great way to inject some drama into your photography.
Youll need somewhere fairly dark so that any stray or ambient light doesnít affect your long exposures. Ideal locations include an unlit park, playground or even a graveyard. Maybe there’s a ruined barn or building near you. Dumped cars in elds and old, twisted fallen trees can also make good subject matter.
Whatever you choose to shoot, make sure it has some fairly light detail that can be illuminated by ash. Black statues hidden among dark trees wont cut the mustard here.
Its amazing just how much you can transform a scene using a long exposure and one ashgun.
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As your exposures could run into minutes (and way beyond the 30-second shutter speed of DSLRs), a remote release cable that can be locked open is essential. A strong and sturdy tripod is also crucial to avoid any movement from wind, which will ultimately ruin the image.
Try to avoid extending the leg sections if you can (particular the lower, thinner ones).Its a good idea not to raise the centre column. Stand the tripod on a higher surface if need be and avoid any uneven ground or surfaces.
Theres a bit of science to this art and in the good old lm days youd have had to measure the distance the ash was red from the object then perform lots of difcult calculations according to the ash power setting.
Not with digital! All you need to do is avoid ring the ash within the frame of the shot, unless its hidden behind an object. If you want a little sky colour rather than pitch black, then re the shutter and leave it open for two minutes. Check the results on your cameras LCD and adjust as necessary.
Double the time if its too dark and reduce by half if its too bright. It may take a few attempts to get things spot on, but remember there are no lm-processing costs!
The exciting part is wandering around the frame, ring the ash off towards your subject (in our case, those old gravestones). The technique is simple stand outside the frame, point the ash from above your head, from your waist and near the oor. Do this several times while roaming around the frame. Check the results on the LCD after the exposure as this will tell you if you need more ashes or less for the best exposure.
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When shooting in the dark, metering is unnecessary and long shutter speeds require extra digging in the camera menu. Follow our advice on the best possible set up for painting with ash.
Exposure mode
Manual mode is the only one that will work as in- camera metering becomes defunct.
Aperture
set it to f/22 or f/18 for greater depth of eld, sharpness and longer exposure times.
Shutter speed
switch your camera to the Bulb setting and expose for around four minutes.
Focus mode
use AF to focus on the closest object to the camera before switching to Manual.
File format
use RAW for top quality and the smoothest results while tweaking in the digital darkroom.
White Balance
select Sunny or Flash presets for natural-looking results on your LCD.
Mirror lock-up
if your camera has this function, switch it on for the sharpest shots possible.
Noise reduction
- most cameras have this feature, so switch in order to yield smoother results.
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Switch your ashgun to manual power and select an output setting around 1/8th of full power. We decided to leave our Stofen Omnibounce tted as it would provide some extra ambient light and not make the direction of ash too critical.
On our old, battered Nikon SB-28 model we red the ash several times manually by pressing the ash button.
Painting with ash involves a degree of trial and error, but its still worth bearing in mind the following tips when youre out: try to avoid ring the ash inside the frame, make sure theres enough overall sh, and ensure you dont vary ash intensity too much.
Graveyards and fields can also be tricky to traverse, so be careful where you step in the dark you cant use a torch because the ambient light will spoil the shot. When things go wrong, dont panic. Youll soon get the hang of it (and remember youre only burning battery power!).
Not enough ash
If your images appear to suffer from imbalanced brightness between different areas of the subject, try moving further away from the bright areas. You can also reduce the number of ashes. Again, this depends on trial and error, but ití’s worth the effort.
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Setting up in daylight helps to dene the frame boundary with rocks or branches so you dont poke the ash inside the frame. You can walk across the frame, but if youre ring the ash make sure you hide it behind part of your subject and point it away from you.
Unbalanced ash
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Another common error is failing to pump enough light onto your subject through fear of overexposure. Resist upping the power to 1/2 or full power and try ashing more. Using less power creates a more natural, painted look.
Posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 2:27 pm under Photography Tutorials.
Tags: creative photography ideas, flash, landscape, low-light photography, night photography, painting with light, urban
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