On the way home I tried tackling the problem of taking photos without looking like it. Sometimes it doesn't pay to point a camera at a group of people or person, because it's either intrusive or awkward. Plus, I'm really not interested enough in shooting strangers to talk to them and ask permission.
As I walked down the sidewalk I took a single photograph with my camera from where it hung around my neck, at about waist level. I wasn't expecting much, and I didn't get much. There was a car on the road and I got a very dark photo with the cars headlights as the only point of light.
So that got me thinking... what if I took a series of long exposure photos as I walk, not stopping so it doesn't look like I'm taking photos, and try to do fun stuff with lights?
I had a blast! This photographic technique is (generally) called light painting. But in normal light painting the camera is stationary and people move the lights, giving a very controlled effect. If ever you are bored, head to Flikr and see the fantastic things people can draw with colored LED flashlights.
What I did is more abstract; I was moving, the lights, in some cases, were moving, and sometimes I also moved the camera to try to make additional changes to patterns. Here are my results:
1. Abstract, yes, but if you look behind the light layers in the bottom right corner you can see a house. There are details that are hidden by the glaring lights in all of these photos.
2. I had the camera's white balance set to auto for most of these, and the selection turned the road pink most of the time, likely reflecting the streetlights.
3. Those with low-contrast monitors won't even see the reddish patch of road balancing the white light in this photo.
4. Sky, trees and street lights. I do not know why the light lines are dotted, but I'm guessing it is because of my walking motion.
5. Car tail lights paint a beautiful red-orange, and do not have the dotted effect... so maybe the dots have something to do with the type of lights, as the street lamp in this photo is clearly dotted.
6. Drawing with a camera, as mentioned before, is not the right way to go about this. I tried to draw some triangles but not having a frame of reference and the sensitive movement of the camera make it difficult.
7. Three light snake people chase down another light snake person. One of my favorites.
8. Shrinking these images down for this blog sometimes loses a lot of detail apparent when the images are larger. There's a lot of subtle background detail that got lost in the reduction.
9. A car driving down the road, with a swirled camera motion.
10. I liked the implied motion in this one.
11. More crazy trees and the appearance of purple.
12. Geese taking off from the pond, captured in someone's porch lights.
13. Crazy light hand, grabbing the road.
14. Streetlights on a cool blue sky. I was standing still when I did this one, and the patterns match the movements I made with the camera, and lack the motion blur of shots when I'm walking.
15. Another shot standing still. Nice lens flare from the unprotected (no filter), 35mm.
16. There's some slight photoshoppery happening in this one. I took this photo with my camera's white balance set to tungsten, to see what it would do to this street light. But I used Lightroom (it's like Photoshop but focused on photo development) to change the white balance to shade. It brought out the greens and made the road more red, while leaving a cloud somewhat white.
17. I wasn't going to try to spell out my whole name because it'd be too easy to lose my place as I drew all 13 characters, so I drew my initials instead. My handwriting with my camera is as bad as my handwriting on paper. Fun.
© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.
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