9 February 2009

Images of Canberra - Yerrabi Pond with lighting silly buggers

| johnboy
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Danman has sent in this strange image with the following note:

    Located at Yerrabi Pond in Gungahlin – 100 year storm tunnels that span the underside of mirrebi drive.

    Some technical specs – NIKON D70 – f7.1@25mm – no flash – ISO200 – fired with IR bulb setting for 549 seconds (9.15 minutes) – Time of photo 11:25pm

    Colouring is all done on site with a multi coloured LED torch – painting each tunnel with light in turn – Danman “Signature” painted with light on far wall can be seen in the high res image.

    High Res also available 🙂

    Notable mention to my assistant for the night, Granny, for watching my gear whilst I left it unattended for several minutes at a time, and saving my sanity on those long 10 minute exposures.

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Quite possibly – but ill be offline from my photography for about 2 weeks – but we should catch up – ill be home for 2 weeks.

So are we going out to do another shoot then, Danman? I’ll be in Hobart for a few days to a week helping out my daughter while her son is in hospital, but let me know if you need some help after that!

: )

Maybe we can do the bus shelter one again too ….

Holden Caulfield11:26 pm 09 Feb 09

Danman, I reckon your approach is to be applauded, and I definitely appreciate the knowledge and skill behind your methods. Just don’t let the puritan keep telling you that some digital effects are not as worthy of the old skool ways. Like I hinted at earlier, a good creative solution is always a good creative solution, regardless of how the creator expresses or produces it.

HC – I guess I prefer to do what I can on film on digital as well, no more, no less. Call me a puritan I guess. Digital photography, as great is it is, made it a whole lot easier, but created a lot of dumber people, not being able to nail teh shot first time, and instead reviewing their results on site and trying again. Dont get me wrong, its revolutionary for many reasons, but I like to challenge myself.

I usually keep post production to a minimum and only really indulge in heavy manipulation to make my clones.

I prefer to steer away from digital manipulation as well because its too easy to achieve your desired results post production, preferring instead to take the road less travelled to achieve the same results.

Call me a sucker for punishment, but in this way, I could achieve the exact same results via my film SLR as well, and only needing one frame to do so.

Even in my darkroom, I dodge and burn negatives, in effect creating a paper image of what is now known as HDR. I still use this method to develop enlargements.

I may have a bit of a chip on my shoulder because I started photography pre digital,but I prefer doing things the hard way still… I guess its a puritan thing, knowing I have the skill to do it without the aid of a delete button or an undo function…

The torch I used for this experiment was a LED LENSER Quattro – $75 bucks and its yours.
The white LED’s (3 of) have a throw of about 100 meters in pitch black (As tested at Yass Cemetary)

Holden Caulfield10:19 pm 09 Feb 09

Danman said :

HC – I pride myself on less = more in photoshop (or GIMP in my case)
I prefer to take photographs, instead of making digital art.

I will go back to the location and get the same result minus overexposure without digital manipulation – F7.1 is a very wode open arpeture – I could go F22 get the sky and lights perfect and expose my coloured lights in the tunnel for longer , thus providing the same light in the tunnels but less exposure on the sky elements

Fair enough I guess and it comes down to how you define digital art I suppose. I can see the value in the theory of reshooting the photograph to overcome the issues you have with the original, and if there is an option to do that pre-download then go for it.

But really, by using the cool lighting technique you’re already creating “art” of some sort. That is, you’re creating an effect that doesn’t exist in reality, so I can’t really see why you’d have an issue with a bit of digital editing, especially if a “real” solution was not available and the editing would make a better overall result?

Creativity springs from the mind. The manner and equipment used to capture, produce or express that creativity needn’t weaken the result.

Slightly shorter exposures might work out a bit better. Too bad the lowest ISO on the d70 is 200 🙁

Nice work though! Very unique. Also watch out for camera/tripod shadows 😉

If you’re going to re-shoot it, think about skipping the signature – in my opinion it detracts a bit from the image.

johnboy said :

Mr Evil said :

Yeah, what is it with people tweaking their photos on Photoshop type software all the time?

I personally think that is cheating, but maybe I’m too old fashioned!

It’s an age old argument. Even in the old analogue world a lot of effects could and would be added in the dark room.

Things like waving hands over the developing print to change exposure.

Personally it’s not for me and after a point I agree with Danman that it’s more digital art than photography.

But then I prefer candid shots to posed ones

Better photographers than I take a contrary view however.

I gots to agree. And as they always used to say when I was studying “Get it right the first time and save yourself the time and trouble of worrying about it later’…or something along those lines. Having said that, I do use the odd ‘sharpen’ and ‘burn tool’ whenever it’s needed. Sometimes ya just gotta cheat.

Woody Mann-Caruso4:32 pm 09 Feb 09

Light painting works well for portraits as well. Pose your subject in darkness, open the shutter, then ‘highlight’ particular areas with a torch.

Incidentally Dan, got a link for the torch you’re using?

Mr Evil said :

Yeah, what is it with people tweaking their photos on Photoshop type software all the time?

I personally think that is cheating, but maybe I’m too old fashioned!

It’s an age old argument. Even in the old analogue world a lot of effects could and would be added in the dark room.

Things like waving hands over the developing print to change exposure.

Personally it’s not for me and after a point I agree with Danman that it’s more digital art than photography.

But then I prefer candid shots to posed ones

Better photographers than I take a contrary view however.

Danman said :

HC – I pride myself on less = more in photoshop (or GIMP in my case)
I prefer to take photographs, instead of making digital art.

Yeah, what is it with people tweaking their photos on Photoshop type software all the time?

I personally think that is cheating, but maybe I’m too old fashioned!

HC – I pride myself on less = more in photoshop (or GIMP in my case)
I prefer to take photographs, instead of making digital art.

I will go back to the location and get the same result minus overexposure without digital manipulation – F7.1 is a very wode open arpeture – I could go F22 get the sky and lights perfect and expose my coloured lights in the tunnel for longer , thus providing the same light in the tunnels but less exposure on the sky elements

Holden Caulfield3:40 pm 09 Feb 09

Oh, in regards to the over exposure of the street lights I think you’re right in that you’ll need to take two photos (or more maybe) and use the relevant bits to create the “perfect” result.

If you’re shooting digital, you may as well go the whole hog!

Holden Caulfield3:38 pm 09 Feb 09

Nice work, looks great. And really cool how there is no light bleed from the tunnels. 🙂

Next time, though, go to the effort of spending some time in Photoshop to remove the shadow cast from your tripod.

gingermick said :

Granny, was it a preplanned meeting? Or were you individually lurking in the Gunghalin bushes?

I don’t think you could say, ‘preplanned’ exactly, since it was pretty spur of the moment once we realised we practically live across the road!

But I wasn’t indulging my bush-lurking habit at the time either.

; )

That is really good work, another exceptional photo from Danman.

timgee2007 said :

Danman – can you post your Flickr addy again pls?

I will beat Danman to it.
http://flickr.com/photo.gne?id=3227938186

Granny, was it a preplanned meeting? Or were you individually lurking in the Gunghalin bushes?

That’s because you are a disturbed individual, Gingermick!

*chuckle*

I think he was a bit worried that I might stab him in the back or do something mildly psychopathic, since he’d never met me before and we were all alone in the wilds of Gungahlin at two in the morning … with nary a police officer to be found!

And Gungahlin did look a bit like ‘The Day After’ ….

I have a disturbing mental picture of Granny watching your gear.

that’s very very cool

It was the funniest thing watching him run around painting the tunnels with light – the light would pop up all over the place. It gave me the giggles! But the coolest thing was when the ‘Danman’ signature came out …. I had no idea he was doing that!!

: )

Gungahlin Al1:34 pm 09 Feb 09

the alien landscape look is cool!

Some would argue that it’s easy to get that look in a pic of Gungahlin… 🙂

Clever pic Dan!

Danman – can you post your Flickr addy again pls?

Danman said :

Mr Evil – thats my new project – to unmundane canberra brutalist archetecture 🙂

Well, you’re going to be busy for a while then! 🙂

Mr Evil – thats my new project – to unmundane canberra brutalist archetecture 🙂

IMO this is not an ideal capture as teh detail on the street lights os blown right out whilst the tunnels are exposed perfectly. Not being a great fan of HDR – I may have to combine 2 images to get the results I want.

Thanks all for the comments – my payment for my time photographing is critique – either way, good or bad 🙂

Bloody show off! 🙂

That is a fantastic image, and I like that fact that you have taken such a mundane concrete monstrosity and made it look really interesting.

oh yeah… he he he… well the exposure time made it look that way. Important thing being the alien landscape look is cool!

Danman, a fantastic image. You should print off 200 copies, delete the file, and then sell said copies as limited editions for $250 each.

@niftydog: it’d have to be very, very late afternoon sun if Danman took the pic at 11.25pm!

Pommy bastard11:49 am 09 Feb 09

Well done, excellent on site manipulation.

Class.

Crazy – nicely done, Danman. That late arvo sun makes it look like it was taken on another planet.

Wow thats a cool. Looks more like an illustration than a photo. Extra points for being in the best part of Canberra 😉

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