Rodney Campbell's Blog

The Mains with a dash of Light Painting…

by on Feb.09, 2012, under Life, Photography

I drive past these largish mains water pipes almost every day and I had been thinking in my mind for quite some time that I’d like to have a go at light painting them in the dark to see what could be done. In my mind I was hoping for a sort of semi indistinctly appearing out of the darkness sort of look – at least that was what I was envisioning… 🙂

Whilst on a recent walk near my home I also found another set of exposed pipes which showed some promise (as they were surrounded and covered by trees which would block out nearby street lights and so should essentially be totally dark at night).

Since it thankfully finally stopped raining in Sydney over the weekend I thought I’d go out at night and give it a try.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

It turned out at the first location that even at night the area was very well lit (too well lit) with a number of very bright street lights, cars headlights as they pass by, etc. However not to be deterred I setup a few compositions and stopped down to allow me time to walk through and paint with my LED headlamp torch.

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm, 60 sec at f/16, ISO 100

I then moved on to the other location I’d found which was thankfully a lot darker and began again.

NIKON D7000 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 60 sec at f/16, ISO 100

I tried a number of different compositions and light painting at both locations including shooting straight on, from an angle, etc and lighting from behind and from in front from both sides of the frame – which I think was probably more successful at the second location. This was a first attempt at this and I’m not sure I’ve done it any sort of justice yet – any feedback or suggestions gratefully accepted 🙂


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