On Saturday the 7th of March. I was coming home from Cardiff. When we we're driving down the M4. It was dark, so I had an opportunity to take some good photos of light trails using my Nokia Lumina phone. At first I thought this wouldn't work because the camera of a Nokia Lumina is only 5 megapixels. In the end the images we're only 3.8 megapixels. However this turned into a good thing. This was because the low-resolution meant that my camera would only capture the light movement.
My only regret from this photo-shoot is that I used a phone camera rather than a DSLR. So the next time I go out in my dads car and it is dark. I'm going to take my DLSR, so I can have another go at this idea.
Favourite imageThis is my favourite image of the set. The first thing I like about this set in the composition of the image. As you can see, the subject of the image is right in the middle of image. This was very hard to achieve because the subject was moving at around 50-60 mph. So I had to guess when I should press the shutter. Also with the composition. This is one of the few image where I actually caught the light right in the middle of the image. The 2nd thing I like about this image is the abstraction of the image. This image looks like a face. So therefore this makes the image abstract. Once again this was down to luck because my phone camera took a picture of a truck going past. Because of the angle of the truck I managed to capture 3 sets of lights, which makes the image look like a face. This is because of the angle I was holding the camera at.
|
Least favourite imageOut of all my photos, this is the least impressive one in my opinion. The first thing I don't like about this image is the composition. I don't like this aspect because the subject of the image. The light source. Is all the way in the corner of the image. Because the subject is right in the corner. People might miss it. This is because most people who look at photos, instantly look at the centre of the image. So therefore people will just think that this is a blank image. The second thing I don't like about this image is the blur. I'm referring to the surrounding of the line. This was create via camera shake. This occurred because of the speed of the cars.
|
This photo-shoot has given me an idea for my first final piece for creative use of light. After taking these images, I realised that the light sources we're all over the image. So I thought of the idea of merging all of the images together. This could possibly be an idea for my first final piece. The idea of me merging came into my head because I thought of filling up the image. And merging most of these image together would work. However before I move on to make this final piece. I need to retake these images. This time with a DSLR. This way the images would be bigger. Then I could enlarge them for my final piece.
I'm going to retake these photos on Sunday. This is because I'm going to my Uncles house and I will be coming back when it is dark. So therefore I will have a chance to get photos of Light Trails but this time with a DSLR.
2nd Attempt
Above is the 2nd set. I intended to re-take these images with a DSLR, where I encountered a problem. My phone simply takes a photo, regardless of the lighting. Whereas the DSLR, will keep changing the focus. So as a result I was unable to take the photos on a DSLR. So rather than giving up, I decided to retake these photos on my dads iPad air.
3rd Attempt
Below are the photos from my 3rd attempt at getting photos of light trails. This time I took these images with a DSLR. A Canon 400D to be exact. I took these photos whilst I was on my way home from Whitstable. So down the A2. Quite a lot of these photos were taken in foggy conditions. This led to some interesting results.
|
These photos we're taken more in the sense of an exposure, this is because on Flickr, it is showing the shutter speeds of "4" or "1.3". This is indicating to me that the shutter was open for 4 seconds or 1.3 seconds. The reason why this happened is because of how the sensors on the DSLR work. The shutter had to remain open because the sensor wants to capture an actual image rather than just light movement. So this way the shutter will stay open for longer to take in more detail, whereas it just takes in more light movement. This was intended by me because I only want to capture light movement, I don't want to capture an object, just the light.
|
Favourite ImageThis is my most favourite image of the set. The first thing I like about this image is the swervy lines. This shows you that there was slight camera movement. This also gives a sense of motion. The 2nd thing I like about this image is the amount of lights. This is because the exposure has picked up the light from a Petrol station sign, there also appears to be lights from cars. There is even light from motorway lights at the top of the image. The 3rd thing I like with this image is the sense of scale. Scale is created by the angle we're looking at the sign. It looks like it has been dragged a long way down the road.
|
Least Favourite ImageThis is my least favourite image of the set. The first thing that is disappointing with this image is the lack of light. This is because there is only a small light trail that is only going along a 1/4 of the image. Maybe a 1/3 of the image. This is actually really irritating with this image because I think this could of been the best image of the set because the composition is perfect, the focus is perfect. With the focus, look at how sharp the light movement is, it stands out perfectly. With the composition the light is perfectly in the middle of the image. However the only thing which has ruined this image is the small light trail. In my opinion this could of been the best image of the set if the light trail was bigger.
|
Final piece idea
After taking this DSLR set, I came up with a new idea for my first final piece for Creative Use Of Light. I could display some of the best ones using the panorama display strategy. I could display this as a panorama because I could make the images looks like they are one continued line.
Hopefully something similar to what I have above, however I would like the light trails to line up, like I said to make it look like a light trail
Merged final pieces
I have decided to go with the idea of merging the light trails together. So next I've decided to make a couple and experiment with the merging on Photoshop. The reason why I'm merging these together is because the light trails are all over the image, so if I merged some together, it will be like some sort of Abstract image where the main factor is light. I can only merge 3 images together. The reason why is because if I merge anymore together, we will be unable to see the photo that is at the back, I could lower the opacity of the photos at the front, but then we will lose the illusion of the merged image.
How I made them
Steps:
|
|
Editing the images
After merging some of the images, I decided to go back to the original images. I decided to do this because I was having a problem with merging the images. Some of the images had a background that made the difficult to merge. I had to find a way get ride of the background. I managed to get rid of the background by adjusting the "Brightness/Contrast" of the image. I decreased the brightness down to the lowest value and I increased the contrast to the higher values. This will make the images easier to merge and easier to put in a line for the 'linear/panorama' final piece idea.
First Final Piece
Above is what my first final piece was going to look like. However Mr Nicholls told me to looks at photos taken by Harry Callahan
How I made it
|
Harry Callahan took photos similar to what I did, however there was a greater contrast of colour in his images compared to mine.
As you can see with the photos above, there is a much greater contrast than my images. So after looking at these images, Mr Nicholls recommended to me I should marge these images in a different way. The way I merged them is shown on the right.
|
I'm very pleased with my final piece for Creative Use of Light. The main thing I like about this is the contrast in colour. This great contrast has been created by the merging of the images in a different way compared to copying and pasting them over each other and changing the opacity. I also like the 2 lights trails that are out of focus, which was created by using a blur filter, Motion Blur to be specific.