Rodney Campbell's Blog

My second daughter was in year 5 at school this year, and by tradition the year 5’s hold a farewell evening for the leaving year 6 students before they head off to high school next year. The theme for ours this year was Arabian Nights…

Note: These photographs (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.

Seems like only a few years ago my babies were… well babies… time certainly flies. This one is going to be School captain next year – very proud of her…

Farewell

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 1/25 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1000

Arabian Nights

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 62 mm, 1/100 sec at f/5.6, ISO 800

The next day and here we are amidst the explosion of shaving cream that is the tradition of the last day of school…

Just Shavin’

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/2500 sec at f/4, ISO 100

Totally inspired by the very fine work of fellow Aussie photographer Christopher Prins I thought I’d try some Light Painting of a different nature.

Normally I’m involved with light painting of large scale landscape type scenes but in this instance I wanted to try a more delicate touch on some near macro subjects.

The Brush

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 122.00 sec at f/22, ISO 100

So armed with just a single small LED torch with some black gaffer tape wrapped around the head to allow me to more finely control the light and limit any spill I set about light painting my subjects.

Over a few days I’d collected some typically Australian – for want of a better word – “nuts” – from my local area. I setup two tripods in a darkened room at home – one with my camera with the trusty Tamron 90mm macro lens and the other with my new Wimberly Plamp to hold my subjects both still and in the position I wanted them so I could paint them.

I was aiming to use exposures of around one to two minutes to give myself enough time to slowly paint my subjects with light whilst choosing an aperture appropriate for the depth of field I wanted.

My first results…

Whirly Birds on Green

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 99 sec at f/22, ISO 100

A classic Australian – the Gumnut from a Eucalyptus (Gum) tree

Mr Gumnut

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 122.00 sec at f/36, ISO 100

and another typically Australian character – this time the long dead flower spike from a Banksia tree

Banksia Man

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 97 sec at f/22, ISO 100

Every year our local school has an evening of Christmas Carols – it’s a fun night with food and music and great company. It’s also a chance for me to do my normal photographic duties of all the various events (like the bands playing, the various childrens choirs and so on) but also do some candid portraiture with the children dressed up and having fun.

This year I took my SB-900 flash, a softbox and a lightstand with me – and setup an impromptu one light setup out on the oval just on sunset looking to take some images with the strobe to freeze motion (some of the kids even wanted to do group jumping in the air and so on :)), with a little colour in the sky but the rest falling to darkness.

The colour didn’t last very long (even when I started pushing the ISO) but the kids thought is was a bit of fun (most only gave me one take when I walked up with all my crap so it was a little hit and miss with the lighting :)) and some of them turned out pretty well

Here is one with my eldest and youngest daughters

One Light Carols

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/60 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100

As part of the Sydney city Christmas celebrations the Lights of Christmas is back on again this year with light projections onto some of Sydney’s famous CBD landmarks like St Mary’s Cathedral and the Town Hall during December in the lead up to Christmas day.

I’d had an idea for something I wanted to shoot with the projections on St Mary’s Cathedral being reflected on the pond during twilight – and since this is quite close to my work I stayed back one evening just before Christmas and headed out to shoot.

Merry Christmas everyone – have a safe and happy holidays…

With sunset just after 8PM and the projections starting at 8:30PM you only get one small window of opportunity to shoot with some twilight colour in the sky – by 8:40 twilight is pretty much done – ah well a short shoot is a good shoot 🙂

Shot with a 2 Stop Lee Graduated ND to hold down the brighter sky and building projection to match with the reflection – 8:25PM

Sydney Christmas

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 42 mm, 15 sec at f/13, ISO 100

There was quite a bit of wind gusting about so to smooth out the water I figured I’d try a long exposure by stacking a 3 stop ND with the two stop grad for a lazy 202 seconds (only got one take before the real show started – this turned out pretty well considering the projection actually changed mid way through) – 8:29PM

Faerie Palace

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 42 mm, 202.00 sec at f/13, ISO 100

Once the show started I ditched the ND and had to bump the ISO (to 400) and open the aperture a little to speed up the shutter (the animations get faster and faster each year and you have to time your shots for those moments with the longest static scenes) – 8:34PM

Crystal Palace

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 42 mm, 4 sec at f/11, ISO 400

8:42PM and twilight is gone (at least for these exposure times)…

Madonna & Child

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 42 mm, 5.00 sec at f/11, ISO 400

I also put together this neat little animated GIF composed of 25 frames leading from twilight to night during the 15 minute projection show

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 42 mm, 2.5-202 sec at f/8-13, ISO 100-400

I taught an introduction to light painting at one of my local camera clubs recently. A little background, a run through of some tools and techniques and some examples followed by a practical group session outside afterwards when it was dark enough.

Note: These photographs (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.

We had no real environment to include in our shots and the ambient street lights didn’t help but it was enough for the people to just see the effect of building up the light painting effects during a long exposure.

One of our simple test setups on the night – with some modelling from one of our club members who I must say managed to stay remarkably still during the 3+ minute exposure with lots of ambient light around. Red and blue EL wire all around for the fiery effect and a couple pops with a snooted flash from behind

Fire Z

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm, 211.00 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100