Bit of an experiment

[Nuffles]

I needed to take some shots for a Christmas project for uni so came up with this little idea. I live in a small village when I'm back home in the holidays and I've grown up here since the age of 3 or so. I decided to do a few shots looking at the places around the village where I made my memories as I was growing up. The play-park was somewhere I spent a huge amount of time, so I headed over there tonight. I left most of my equipment at uni and only have my camera, 17-55mm f/2.8, and 430EXmk2 with me. I borrowed my Dad's tripod and set out into the drizzle not expecting much. I used long exposure (20-30secs) and ran around like a mad thing manually firing off the flash around the scene. There are three flashes in this one, and I'm pretty psyched with how it came out. I'll link the other two I got, but I'm not so pleased with them - especially the tractor one.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sundustphotos/6650004809/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sundustphotos/6649990285/in/photostream/

I'd have stayed longer but the drizzle was turning slowly into rain and my battery was rapidly coming to the end of it's charge. They'll be good enough for my Christmas project, and I might come back to this when I come home for Easter.

 

[Cistron]

This might be interesting for you: http://strobist.blogspot.com/2011/09/mike-kelley-two-speedlight.html

 

[spudey]

I like the composition in the second one with the rocking horse bike thing.

The yellow street lighting isn't the nicest though. To get around that you could put an orange gel on your flash to match the street light, then you can adjust the white balance to bring them both close to white.

Alternatively you could do a B&W conversion.

Good attempt though, well done.

 

[alexam]

Well done Jack. It has given me ideas for the future and the link that5 Mike gave leads to an absolutely fantastic way to work.

 

[Nuffles]

Mike: I've seen some stuff done like that before, I've bookmarked it to definitely have a look at it in the future. Thanks for the input.

Ryan: As I shot in RAW, I did try processing two images - one with the white balance adjusted to suit the tractor and one to suit the street light, before combining them and using a layer mask to bring out the correct white balance for both. It didn't look right, however, it felt wrong having lost all of the colour of the street light. In the end I went for single processed image with the white balance set between the two, but biased more towards the tractor. When I've got a free hour or so I might try split WB processing again, but leave some of the orange in the streetlight. This'll keep the tractor as the main focal point - being the right colour - but takes some of the garishness out of the orange while leaving it that creepy sodium orange that you only see at night time. Again, thanks for your input.

Malcom: Cheers mate - definitely give it a go. You don't need any fancy equipment - to do it the way I did all you need is a camera capable of long exposure and a flash with a test button.