Category: Night Photo
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Under the fire red umbrella
The Star Circle Academy recently invited Eric and I to burn some stuff for them. And so on a warm Friday evening, 20 people climbed down on to the beach in Santa Cruz and proceeded to make mayhem. Steel wool (wire wool if you’re British), magnesium, lighter (BBQ) fluid, flash lights (torches), and all manner…
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Lessons in battery life at Clear Lake
Shooting star shots takes a lot of juice. Often you’ll find people jacking their cameras in to car batteries, generators, all sorts of devices in an attempt to keep them shooting through the cold nights. Me, I just buy more batteries and keep an eye out for when they’re getting flat. A good fresh battery…
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Sutro Baths and Bird Crap
The Bay Area Night Photo group met recently at Sutro Baths in San Francisco. Once upon a time the place was magnificent, now it’s just a pile of decaying concrete. Which makes it perfect for setting fire to! One day I’ll show you how we make these fireworks. In the meanwhile I’m sure a…
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Tutorial: Neighing in the rain (white balance)
It’s all about the crop or It’s all about the temperature I posted the below picture last week. I was very unhappy with it at the time but I couldn’t work out how to make it better. Thanks to May‘s version of the image, I now know what I was doing wrong. The above picture…
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Slinging Fire in the Fog
The above photo is not mine. It was taken by May Wong. She kindly allowed me to showcase it here, I’ll explain why in a mo. Here’s her Facebook page. For a while now Eric and I have talked about teaching a light painting class, and while nothing has come of it, we have used…
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Stars and Fireworks – 3x Published Picture!
I love this picture. I took it a while back on the beach in Santa Cruz, while surrounded by high kids asking “hey man, that’s cool. What ya doin? Wanna smoke with us?”. It’s actually two spins that meshed together nicely – one towards the camera, the other perpendicular. It’s somewhat unusual in that I…
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Fully Armed – Showing the tools
This is the second shot made with the same tool as Taking Aim. There’s some differences, firstly I rewired (plug n play) the inner light so that it was blue. Then I added an child’s umbrella to cover my face and add an extra dimension. This is the straight-out-of-camera shot. Click for the large view.…
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Perfect Moon Landing
Some people are smarter than me. I know it. I’m ok with it. The way I see the world, we all have our role. Steven from Star Circle Academy and Phil McGrew are two such people. They worked out that if you stood in just the right spot, at just the right time, on just…
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Taking Aim
As you’ll find out if you stick around, I’m terrible at flash photography. That said, I’m trying hard and learning a lot. The above photo has a large strobe in front and to the left of the image to give Deanna the front light see needs, but the scene is mostly lit by the light…
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Mission Impossible
Deanna clearly hates me. She’s booked us to spend 4 days hiking the Grand Canyon. As far as I can tell it’ll be a lot of downhill, a little flat, and then the mother of all up-hills. So I need to practice. The worst hike near the house is Mission Peak; it’s a 2,500ft rise…