Capture ‘the beauty’ of artificial light in a short sequence of shots….
I loved the look of Sato Shintaro’s night time shots but there was one taken at blue hour that I found the most inspiring.
Rut Blees Luxemburgs images of reflected signs were also an inspiration, the bright artificial lights of the signage combining with the warmth of the street lights.
I was determined to try a few of my own and try to combine both the above artists work from my nearest town (the village I live in has a couple of street lights but not much else). I was also trying to wait for a rainy day so I could capture reflections but conscious of delaying the exercise I also took a few in the house. I wanted the blue hour light and artificial light in the same shots and was surprised that this was even achievable in an intimate shot like the first two below.
Unfortunately that was it for a week or so due to bad weather. However one afternoon the wife bought in the last remaining lettuce from the allotment. I did the usual wash and spin but before doing so noticed three or four tiny snails – no more than a few mm in length. Ahah I thought I could try a few macro shots with a bit of lettuce and experiment with flash. The following shots are the best of the bunch but they weren’t what I wanted for this project – all images shot at 1/200 f/22 ISO200 manual focus.
With something as reasonably slow moving as this focus was not too much of a problem but the macro lens even at f22 has such a shallow depth of field that even something this small was difficult to get completely in focus (I didn’t want to go down the focus stacking route for this exercise!). The combination of low power flash / high fstop and close up work meant that the background receives practically no light – helped by the black cloth and the inverse square law of light. I was happy with the results though it’s hard to convey from these images just how tiny they are which is a shame – though you can see from the setup images below. I did play with coloured filters but didn’t like the results so haven’t included them. I love the textures in the lettuce depending on the direction of the light. You can see below that I employed a snoot on most of the shots – this was because the subject was so small I wanted to direct light as much as possible – a 4 way focus rail enables subtle adjustments of the camera.
The weather had been so poor over the week I intended to go out that I was thinking I may be stuck with these or change tact completely but a break on Sunday allowed me a quick journey into town where I managed to capture a flavour of what I was looking for. The following images best convey what I was trying to achieve from this exercise – I wanted the natural blue light and artificial light combined and although this was my only shoot in a short window I was happy enough with results to submit these images.
Reflection
There is another world of photography out there that has just had its surfaced scratched. I have used strobe flash for every other exercise in part 4 of the course so I was determined to get outside and use artificial light in a different way for this section. The above images were in chronological order except for one as I wanted to convey a sense of how the blue hour changed the mood throughout with the orange from the streetlamps becoming more saturated and prevalent as the images progress. I would have liked to try three or four nights ideally taking images but the weather was not kind with too much cloud cover. The blue hour also only seems to last about thirty minutes (maybe it’s just the time of year – I’m sure summer would give me an hour at least!). I had started out by wanting more reflections in the images, it had rained the day before but by next evening most of the puddles had dried up so I have only included one reflected ‘puddle’ image – I’m not actually sure it works with the rest of the series – it feels a little shoehorned in because my initial idea had to change whilst shooting.
I definitely feel the need to spend time in my nearest city, Cambridge, taking blue hour photos, the opportunities with the river, people and lights would be myriad.
Bibliography
Editorial @ ASX (s.d.) Tony Ray-Jones Interviews Brassai” Pt. I (1970). At: https://americansuburbx.com/2011/08/interview-brassai-with-tony-ray-jones.html (Accessed 09/11/2020).
Night Lights (s.d.) At: http://magazine.landscapestories.net/en/archive/2015/night/projects/sato-shintaro (Accessed 13/10/2020).
rutbleesluxemburg.com (s.d.) At: https://rutbleesluxemburg.com/ (Accessed 13/10/2020).
SATO Shintaro (s.d.) At: https://www.pgi.ac/en/artists/689/ (Accessed 13/11/2020).
Sato Shintaro Photographer – Official Website (s.d.) At: https://sato-shintaro.com/work/night-lights/ (Accessed 06/10/2020).
Shintaro, S. and LensCulture (s.d.) Sato Shintaro. At: https://www.lensculture.com/sshintaro?modal=project-1861 (Accessed 13/10/2020).
Stone, M.-L. (2019) ‘The City of Light and its shadows: Brassaï’s Paris – in pictures’ In: The Guardian 08/10/2019 At: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2019/oct/08/city-of-light-brassai-paris-in-pictures-photography (Accessed 09/11/2020).
The Art of Photography (2011) Brassaï. At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40zMPitTpZo (Accessed 09/11/2020).
Understanding the Inverse-Square Law of Light (2016) At: https://petapixel.com/2016/06/02/primer-inverse-square-law-light/ (Accessed 13/11/2020).
Union Gallery, London (c) (s.d.) [No title]. At: http://www.union-gallery.com/content.php?page_id=654&offset=2 (Accessed 13/11/2020).
Ville de Paris (2013) Brassaï, l’amoureux de Paris. At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng7aTRZpQXc (Accessed 09/11/2020).
Lee Abbey OCA Photography Degree 
Lovely work Lee
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