Light Writing

Recently my band (in which I play bass) spent three days and a lot of money recording two songs with our producer friend Joel.  Now the songs came out really well (and will be available for purchase for £1 from my car boot) and now we just need to sort out a CD cover.  After being inspired by last weeks lesson we decided to try and have a go at light writing again so we headed out into the darkness to play with our torches.  Errm!

f/8 30sec ISO100

Trying to write the band name was a difficult task.  My handwriting wasn't up to the challenge.  After several failed attempts and realising that my camera wasn't even facing me properly this one came out, well, lets just say this one came out.

f/8 30sec ISO100

f/8 25sec ISO 100



f/11 30sec ISO 400

f/8 30sec ISO 100

f5.6 1/40sec ISO 400

I really enjoyed running about and trying to create some striking images.  We even tried to be creative at times but it seemed to be a case of trial and error.  Now you may be thinking, "What the heck has that owl got to do with it?  You'll see.

After sifting through the seemingly endless amount of photographs it was time to turn to trusty photoshop for a bit of editing.  This is my favourite part of digital photography.  It's all about the manipulation.





The band initially liked the above idea, the bands name and the blue-lit wall had a nice effect.  Upon printing out the image however some of the detail was lost.  Not to mention it would use up a hell of a lot of ink.  We are on a tight budget here people.  Just to see what would happen, I inverted the image in photoshop which produced this next look which would be a much more ink friendly effort.





This got me thinking and so I started to have a play around with some of the other images.  Again I inverted the colours and did some tight cropping.  Some of the results look quite decent.









Well, well, if it isn't Mr Owl hiding in the light trails.  Told you he'd show up.  This was achieved by adding layers on top of the original photo and blending them together.  I had to experiment with the opacity to get the blend to look right.

So there you have it.  A Monday night well spent methinks.

Shameless plug in - check out www.myspace.com/imogenskiss