Magic Island – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 16mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 289s
Lightpainting: coloured LED torch from various angels
step carefully
they maybe strange things in the water
Techie love data
D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 16mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 289s
Lightpainting: coloured LED torch from various angels
Devlis Cauldron – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklocj
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 32mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 25s
out front – nude worshiping sculpture:)
Lightpainting: Pencil LED torch and my bike lamp (red)
the devils cauldron where ….
Another view of this tiny little sculpture.
Single shot
Exif/setup data:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 32mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 25s
out front – nude worshiping sculpture:)
Lightpainting: Pencil LED torch and my bike lamp (red)
Faceless – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 103 s
out front – no filters..just some crazy sculpture.
watch your back
I walked past this sculpture at some silly hour of the night and nearly fell off the cliff when I saw it, it was tucked away in a little alcove near the path ready to freak out the average passerby.
After recovering from a near heart attack as a result of it, i thought this sculpture would look mad with a little extra in the lighting department, so 5 minutes later after dangling some EL wire and a little selective coloured lighting I found the already scary white sculpture took on a extra dimensions of freaky-ness..
With camera right up against the guard rail the D750 tilt screen came to the rescue – i do wish it could swivel though.. 🙂 anyway at least it meant i did not have to hang my ass over the cliff to compose the shot. .
Lightpainting:
EL wire on the ground, white LED torch selectively applied on the bushes in the background, Red coloured LED torch also selectively applied. The key to remember with the coloured torches is that different colours require differencet amount of exposure, for example the red light takes only a small amount to show up in the picture whereas green takes a bit more time to really get it to show up..I could probably bore you with the theory behind this..but really.. who gives a crap 😉
Techie love data
Single shot
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 103 s
out front – no filters..just some crazy sculpture.
All along THE Watch tower – (c) Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 19mm Aperture: f/19 and Shutter Speed: 104.4s
out front – no filters..just some crazy tall cubby houses
Lightpainting: coloured LED torch
Simplicity is often the best when light painting, like any aspect of photography, its all about the light, get it right and it makes the scene, get it wrong and even a strong composition is gonna struggle.
I took this shot whilst walking between sculptures, it was late and very few people around, the sky was bright and the simple adding of some coloured light brought the sculpture alive.
This year with the sculptures I tried very hard ot take fewer shots and nail the single shot rather have to cull thru several shots for each sculpture i shot. This is one example, this is the only shot I took of this, no retakes or second chances 🙂
Techie love data
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 19mm Aperture: f/19 and Shutter Speed: 104.4s
out front – no filters..just some crazy tall cubby houses
Lightpainting: coloured LED torch
Dance to the Edge Punks – (c) Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 180.2s
out front – no filters..just in need of some pole dancers…
Lightpainting: EL steps, chaos’s fairy wands, coloured LED torch and some very faint EL wire.
pick a podium and run with it
Probably not quite the original intention of the sculpture artist but hey…. I reckon it looks pretty mad 🙂
The full moon played some havoc with the Electroluminescent wire which meant I went for another look using some stronger lights and my classic footprints.
Techie love data
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 180.2s
out front – no filters..just in need of some pole dancers…
Lightpainting: EL steps, chaos’s fairy wands, coloured LED torch and some very faint EL wire.
The Punisher – (c) Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 17mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 74.9s
out front – no filters..just a burly looking dude 🙂
Lightpainting: selective light with a pencil torch on the man, coloured LED torch from various angels and the moon as the perfect rim light.
the dude you want on your side
The moonlight (full moonage) on the sculptures turned the landscape into a totally different scene, hence it was only appropriate to utilise natures light painting in a way to craft a moody scene surrounding this sculpture.
Another great sculpture let down by the positioning, whilst it makes a great silhouette from down below lookign up on the little hill, it unfortunately is very hard to get a nice clean shot with all the crud in the background. Now that I think o fit…this could have been a great candidate for the prime platform position where the bamboo wind chimes currently are.
Techie love data
Single frame
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 17mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 74.9s
out front – no filters..just a burly looking dude 🙂
Lightpainting: selective light with a pencil torch on the man, coloured LED torch from various angels and the moon as the perfect rim light.
Tranquility in a sea of mud – (c) Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 117.7s
out front – no filters..just a funny dude with a branch sculpture :
I love these kind of sculptures, relatively simple concept, ie a dude holding a branch with some birds in it and lots of realistic detail – it must take the artist quite some time and skill just to actually fabricate the sculpture, let alone conceive it.
This one is a direct opposite, for me anyway, of the babies crawling up the hill on the other side of Mark’s park they looked great from the back the whole missing face/square hole just left me confused.
I had wanted to get right down low and really get this sculpture against the sky, however after planting a few steps down on that very deceptive looking grass (and sinking into 6 inches of mud) I had to settle for this composition, which was basically sitting on the pavement above the sculpture. It was strange that the curators chose to place it here, i think it could have really benefited from a more elevated viewing position – note +Sculptures By The Sea if you need some advice just let me know 😉 😉 . Thanks to Mickyg for the use of the spin and the stencils, really cool light painting tools. I can only take credit for the light on the grass (i mean mud) and the sculpture.
Techie love data
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 117.7s
out front – no filters..just a funny dude with a branch sculpture 🙂
The Watchers – (c) Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 32mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 23.3s
out front – bare bummed sculpture:)
Lightpainting: Pencil LED torch
pantless at that 😉
Sculptures by the Sea 2014
Ya gotta wonder what the artist has going through their head when they come up with various works like this – not in a bad way, just purely from a interest point of view.
By day and night the sculptures are plagued with photographers, the lighting painting aspect of the sculptures has seen a roaring increase in the last year of so and every time i have been out there have bee all manner of light painters from peeps with a single torch to pixel sticks and a trailer load of equipment!
On that note, as a lighting painting photographer I think we all have a responsibility to respect the art which we are photographing, I had a midnight chat with a few security guards who mentioned there has been some damage to various works from punters – including that cool bondi icebergs pool one which was smashed 🙁
This image is simply lit with a pencil torch and the moon, simply trying to highlight the sculpture.
Single shot
Exif/setup data:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 32mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 23.3s
out front – bare bummed sculpture:)
Lightpainting: Pencil LED torch
Portal-licious – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
143 frames (startrails) (2 frames for the foreground exposures)
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/5 and Shutter Speed: 60s (each star trail frame) and around 300s for the lighting painting frames.
ISO 800 for the trails. and 100 for everything else
out front – some funky windchime.
Lightpainting: lots of Blue EL wire around the base and EL footprints
super sized windchime
So I had a few hours to burn between jobs midweek so I ducked out for a quick squizzy at the Sclupture by the sea (http://www.sculpturebythesea.com/)
Things were pretty quiet and I had free reign of the place and only had to share this glorified wind chime with a few togs, including some dude doing some timelapse on a dolly, it would be very interested to see how they turn out, so if your the dude there msg me 😉
The lights on the sculpture are a bit of a pain and I did consider turning them off, but it would have been pretty obvious 😉 the red colour makes this tricky since this is the colour that burns out first, i really need to do some more research on blending the dark shots to the startrails, anyone got any good tips?
Exif/setup data:
143 frames (startrails) (2 frames for the foreground exposures)
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/5 and Shutter Speed: 60s (each star trail frame) and around 300s for the lighting painting frames.
ISO 800 for the trails. and 100 for everything else
out front – some funky windchime.
Lightpainting: lots of Blue EL wire around the base and EL footprints
Why – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
Single shot
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/6.7 and Shutter Speed: 294.7s
out front – funky ass sculpture
Lightpainting: Coloured LED torch beaming up, Blue (x 2) and red EL
because you can – the chaos has begun
Chaos: “dad?”
me: “yeah..”
Chaos: “whats that funny blue wire?”
me: ” thats EL wire sweetie”
Chaos: “oh…… what do you do with that dad?”
me: “well..I wave it around in front of a camera while i take a picture”
Chaos: “that sounds like fun, can I do that with you?”
me: “isn’t it past your bedtime?”
🙂
Single shot
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/6.7 and Shutter Speed: 294.7s
out front – funky ass sculpture
Lightpainting: Coloured LED torch beaming up, Blue (x 2) and red EL
Ghouls, gals and the search for the portal – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
134 frames
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/4 and Shutter Speed: 60s (each star trail frame) and around 500s for the lighting painting frames.
Iso 640 for the trails. and 100 for everything else
out front – expenise grave site.
Lightpainting: lots of Blue EL wire around the base, LED torch selectively applied with the street lighting off to the left
Sneaky Sunday Night startrails
I don’t think I would have ever thought that I would end up (alive anyway) sitting amongst a whole stack of rather upmarket grave sites taking star trails shots and eating pizza.
That said, the idea had crossed my radar a few times before and with the conditions just right with moon rise well into the wee hours of the morning this was another great location with very little light pollution (excluding all them planes)
Unlike the previous Malabar session I decided to make the effort and clone out all the boats and plane trails, alittle tedious, but for this one probably worth the effort.
All images loaded into a stack in PS CC and individual layers adjusted to remove the offending aircraft and boat trails.
Similarly to the previous session it appears my version of the +My Nikon Life Nikkor 16-35mm f4 does some weird stuff. It would appear that the right hand side of the image has significantly less sharpness than that of the left, this is the same as the malabar session which i had put down to some weird phenomenon, the fact that its noticeable even on a fairly low resolution jpegs has me concerned, reviewing some of the other images it appears to be severely exacerbated at f4 and improves when stopping down.
So, how does a lens be sharp on one side and not the other? maybe misaligned glass elements? has anyone else experienced this? anyone wanna take a few test shots at f4 to compare?
So back to the cemetery, no ghouls were spotted, but i certainly had my peepers nice and wide looking, a little bit.. well ok, lets be honest a swamps worth of blue EL wire and just a smattering of red completed the foreground shot, noting that the stock standard original foreground of the star shots actually looks pretty good also, the street lights off to the left (couple of hundred metres away) gave some nice natural side lighting.
No ghouls or grave sites were harmed nor disrespected in this session 🙂
Exif/setup data:
134 frames
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/4 and Shutter Speed: 60s (each star trail frame) and around 500s for the lighting painting frames.
Iso 640 for the trails. and 100 for everything else
out front – expenise grave site.
Lightpainting: lots of Blue EL wire around the base, LED torch selectively applied with the street lighting off to the left
As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.
Openign the Portal – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/4 and Shutter Speed: 60s (each star trail frame) and around 300s for the lighting painting frames.
Iso 640 for the trails. and 100 for everything else
out front – Malabar bunker for munitions.
Lightpainting: Red and Blue EL wire around the base. Steel wool spin on top the building, LED torch selective applied..
time stands still as the universe parts
other dimensions, dark matter, particle mass, Large Hadron Collider (LHC), this stuff is soo cool, I remember learning about the theory of general and special relativity at uni at it was so intereesting yet was like turning your brain inside out to understand , needless to say I now remember nothing of it,… except it was damn cool and and that Einstein bloke was pretty clever 😉
Well, this session was a bit of a fail, however looking on the bright side, its certainly dark enough for a some trails!
15-20 minute bush bash to get to the location, in the dark of course and with the wind howling, followed by several setup shots and then another 2 hours of mind numbing boredom (oh I suppose you were not that bad Rodney Campbell 😉 ) whilst huddling in a corner of the rock and bunker to keep outta the wind.
The sand and wind reminded me of Anna Bay and stockton beach during which my camera and lens filled up with sand !
I opted for a different take, rather than a clean set of trails, I threw everything at it, its chaos!
So Rod, next time we will just go back to North Bondi eh? 20 metres from the car, pizza down the road, no sand, no wind…
The star trails are made up of 117 shots stacked together in +Adobe Photoshop using the statistics method, this image was then manually blended with a couple of foreground shots. The blend modes varied from lighten to screen and were selectively applied
Exif/setup data:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/4 and Shutter Speed: 60s (each star trail frame) and around 300s for the lighting painting frames.
Iso 640 for the trails. and 100 for everything else
out front – Malabar bunker for munitions.
Lightpainting: Red and Blue EL wire around the base. Steel wool spin on top the building, LED torch selective applied..
No wildlife harmed or fires started, however i sustained many little burns due to that wind blowing that wool spin all over me. Might wear jeans next time 😉
As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.
Devil Within – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 481s
out front – Some fairly large bunker style munitions base.
Lightpainting: Red and Blue EL wire around the base. Blue LED from within the building, white LED torch selective applied.
Its never scary trekking down the side of cliff where its only metres from the edge of death to find some dodgy old bunked in the middle of the night.. you know why? cause its dark and you cant see the bottom to be scared 😉
Rodney had some hair brained idea to check out this bunker perched on the cliffs at North Head, my confidence in him was waning after the first navigation decision to head into some somewhat less dense scrub was a result of him with his phone planted on his face looking at ingress…
“really man.. its literally just metres over there” rod says.
easy for him wearing jeans and all 😉
anyway we did an about turn and followed the well defined path right to it 😉
Back to the bunker of death on the edge of the world – this was a bit hairy, luckily I had no hair left on my legs from the previous scrub bashing so the fear factor was low 😉
Without seeing more in daylight we did limit ourselves to the safety of the bunker surrounds and as a result came up with soime EL wire craziness coupled with a blue LED torch inside the bunker. The surrounds were lit (separate frame) with a white LED just to give some texture and detail to the cool rocks and grasses.
Cheers for a good night Rodney Campbell , next time I am navigating and your wearing the shorts 😉
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 481s
out front – Some fairly large bunker style munitions base.
Lightpainting: Red and Blue EL wire around the base. Blue LED from within the building, white LED torch selective applied.
As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.
Unknown (c) Gerard Blacklock
its not what you cant see that you should be afraid of, but what you can see
Ignorance is bliss.
and no jokes about my legs either 😉
Techie love:
single shot
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/5.6 and Shutter Speed: 2.4seconds
out front – gerrys hairy long legs
between gerry’s legs:… SB600 😉 triggered from the onboard flash (and not very well at that)
As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.
Cosmic Spew – The search for the Portal (c) Gerard Blacklock
The search for the Portal
In a continuation from some more recent lightpainting (https://blog.avernus.com.au/searching-for-the-portal-4/) I do not dare find out what Chaos would think of this image 😉
For this one I teamed up with Rod for some more shenanigans of the EL wire, and steel type, we managed to squeeze this in in amidst of Rodneys hunt for portal keys in
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: >200s
out front – Some fairly large bunker style munitions base.
Lightpainting: Red and Blue EL wire around the base. Steel wool spin from within the building, white LED torch selective applied.
No wildlife harmed (in particular the armies of possums) or fires started
As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.