Chess
Jan, 2014Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
The photo was taken actually in my bedroom because I knew I could use my blinds and door to seal as much light pollution out of the image as possible which I've found important when taking images of light trails. But realistically I could have taken this anywhere relying on the place having little light or anyway to darken the foreground and background to get the lovely rich low key tones I was looking for.Time
This was taken around 10 o'clock at night for the same reason as I choose my bedroom, to simply reduce light pollution such as the natural ambient lighting from the sun although its also important to remember that the night is also rarely completely dark due to streetlights so a way to cover them is important too such as curtains of blinds.Lighting
Lighting was key as I pointed out before because the streak of lighting had to be the only light source of the image, this was to emphasise compositionally the line I wanted the light to form. For the line I actually used a Lego torch, not exactly professional lighting but simply because of it ability to have 2 lights pointing in different directions (the legs!) it aloud for a decent spread of light onto the chess board when moving it through the image.Equipment
I used a Nikon D5100 I believe with the standard 18-55mm lens, this was then situated on a gorilla pod and to take the image I used a cable release so I wouldn't get motion blur in this long exposure shot. The only other equipment was a torch (A nifty Lego one.) and of course a chess set.Inspiration
The beauty of light trails inspired me to do this photo, as for my GCSE work I needed evidence of using light to bring motion and structure into an image. This gave me an idea of using to try and bring motion into an image of an inanimate object and luckily this worked exceptionally well in my favour as the outcome was beautiful.Editing
Not really, all the levels and tones are straight from the cameras sensor, the only thing I did do was clone out a small hair which had cheekily found its way on to the edge of the photo.In my camera bag
What I pack in my bag all depends on the occasion, for a short trip I would only pack my Nikon D5200, standard 18-55mm lens and usually my Nikon 50mm f1.8 prime lens along with gorilla pod and shutter release, and maybe a few filters such as a polarizer. However for a longer trip I would take all of that plus a 55-200mm lens, a 75-300 push zoom lens, a larger tripod, and also a screw on fisheye attachment for 55mm thread which looks surprisingly nice when being used although it can sometimes cause bad chromatic aberrations.Feedback
Always try, try, try and try again! if it doesn't work or look compositionally good, then just take the shot again, this shot took a while to get the line beautifully arched like this and the patience was worth it when this shot came out. I would also suggest trying many different torches or lights because they all will produce completely different results and the light trail could turn out sharp, blurry, vivid, or even just too dark too see so experimentation will be you're best friend when it comes to creating light trails. I would also suggest a shallow depth of field so nothing in foreground or background become a prominent distraction, as this whole I'm is based on using lines to draw the eyes to certain parts of the image.
