Inferno
Fire breather at a festival
Fire breather at a festival
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Nov, 2015Views
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Contest Finalist in All Things Black And White Photo Contest
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Contest Finalist in The Night Photo Contest
Staff Winter Selection 2015
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Vanja78curator
June 29, 2017
Do you have this picture in color ? If you have, please upload it. Shoot is amazing :-)
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken at The Masked Ball 2015 at Halloween. This is a festival that takes place in Flambards theme park in Cornwall over one night and is great for seeing quirky performers and great halloween costumes. During the festival the performers from Circo Inferno walk around doing various tricks with fire ranging from fans to poi to fire breathing.Time
The festival was from 6 in the evening until 6 in the morning so it was pretty hardcore! I think this was taken about midnight but i'm not sure as I tried not to look at the time to make sure I stayed awake! I managed to stay awake until 5 in the morning when I decided I was so exhausted I couldn't work a camera any more, I was one of the last photographers standing.Lighting
I absolutely knew that fire performers in the night would make a great dramatic portrait popping out of the darkness as I have shot these particular performers before. No real thoughts about lighting was needed as it was as simple as - fire lights up anything in it's direct vicinity and the background is black as it is the middle of the night, I love images that have a real contrast to them so anything with fire in the night is a great enjoyment for me.Equipment
This was shot with a Nikon D3200 and a 50mm lens, nothing else. As it's a festival and i'm walking around a lot I tend to keep my equipment at a minimum as I carry it around all day.Inspiration
I was inspired to take this photo because I absolutely love these performers having seen them a few times. Because of this I knew this moment was coming so I was ready for it. I was able to adjust myself accordingly so positioning myself with a direct view of the performer, making sure my shutter speed was able to capture the moment clearly etc. This performer breathed fire quite a few times so If some of my settings weren't correct then I could quickly adjust whilst he took a few seconds between each breath. The reason I love fire so much is that you never know what kind of photo you are going to get. I had my camera on burst mode so I have a load of different versions of this photo but when I saw this shot I knew it was the one as the fire was just so crisp and a perfect shape.Editing
Yes. The first thing I did was just clean up the image a bit, so for example the guy had a flaming torch in his hand but it really distracted from the main lot of fire and didn't look great composition wise so I just got rid of it. I then bumped up the contrast so it really emphasised the flames coming out of the dark. Lastly I made it black and white, the reason I did this was because it just makes the image look so much more cleaner and dramatic.In my camera bag
Since shooting this festival I have upgraded to a Nikon D750 so I keep that on me at all times. The lenses I keep on me are a standard Nikon 50mm, a Sigma 70-200, Tamron 24-70mm and a Nikon 10.5mm fisheye. I also have a Metz flash gun and a Nikon battery grip. As I mostly shoot festivals and gigs I try to keep my equipment as basic as possible as I have to carry it on my back for hours on end. Having a few lenses is important to me as it gives me a wider choice of shots making sure all my images don't look the same.Feedback
For shooting fire performers always watch what they are doing closely, for example their body language or what they are holding as to get a good shot you have to guess what they are about to do, it could be over in a second! For this shot I saw that this particular performer was holding a torch and sipped out of a suspicious looking water bottle, from that you can guess that he is about to breath fire. For fire breathing I like to use a fast shutter speed to capture the shape of the flames but with other types of fire performers sometimes it is nice to have a slower shutter speed, for example when someone is using fire poi they spin them in circular motions, and with a slower shutter you can capture that movement really nicely.
