Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Painting with Light – Outer Banks


Click on the above image for a larger view

The cottage I rent in the Outer Banks is one of the oldest cottages in the area. It won’t be there for long. It’s on an ocean front lot and the owner passed away several years ago. All the other houses around it are new and tower many stories above it. They are there so a hurricane can have something to sink its teeth into. That this is the oldest ocean front cottage attests to the wisdom of its design.

The house is surrounded by small boardwalks that are weathered. The cottage has quite a few resident toys and is obviously peopled by families with young children. The photo above was taken of a space between two walks where some shells had been arranged, probably by a child.

I’ve taken a few at this cottage using the flashlight and time exposure method mentioned in other posts. The benefits of this approach are many, such as; as many apparent light sources as desired, oblique lighting that works well for highlighting textures and the ability to paint/light selectively so there are plenty of areas that are close to the darkest tones. Click here to see a detail view of a light-painted area.

This time I tried a different approach to exposure. I estimated based on one second worth of exposure at F16, but I used a digital camera for a series of test exposures, before replacing it with a Pentax 6X7cm camera with a wide angle lens. This is a major improvement over just blindly shooting a bunch of negatives with fingers crossed.

2 comments:

Ronnie Roach said...

Great post. Hope you enjoy your next visit to the Outer Banks. We have a group of local bloggers on the Outer Banks. You can see a list at my blog http://www.ronnieroach.com

Ed Deasy said...

Ronnie

thanks for the link to your site. You've got a lot of interesting articles. I wasn't aware of the notion of a new Currituck bridge. We've been driving a long route through Edenton and in on the hurricane evacuation route, rather than deal with the usual backups on the more popular route.