Night Photography

Just thought I’d share some photos I took with a mate many nights ago now. I enjoy photography as a hobby and occasionally experiment with new techniques – it’s also one of the reasons I enjoy travelling.

We went out to Maroubra (a coastal Sydney suburb) to take these in the evening. It was our first time experimenting with steel wool in photography so we wanted a nice backdrop in all of our shots. This involved using long exposures of 10 ~ 20 seconds. One of us lit up fine steel wool that was stuffed into a metal whisk and swung it around while the other focused the shot and hit the buttons. As the wool burns and the sparks fly out, it doesn’t last more than around 20 seconds anyway. The effect that you see is a result of the camera’s shutter being open for the duration of the motion, and thus it captures the moving elements of the image as a trail.

For anyone interested in trying this, remember to tie your whisk to a sturdy string! I ended up losing my whisk because the string snapped…so we had to drive a fair distance to the nearest supermarket for another one.

Light painting is a similar technique which involves moving a glowing object in a long exposure against a dark background to trace out an image. Using the LED light on the back of our phones, we were able to use almost the same settings to capture a few of these, though they’re not quite as spectacular as the steel wool ones.

Anyone else into photography? I love doing landscapes, though lately I’ve been getting more interested in long night exposures and star trails.

About zxzxzx

I'm an IT professional who likes computers, anime, tennis, travelling and photography among other things. I often read LNs, manga or watch anime in my spare time if I'm not translating something. I'm a strong supporter of freedom of speech, human rights, and I generally support a left-wing stance on most political subjects.
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7 Responses to Night Photography

  1. John John says:

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    I love doing photography. If you ever get the chance to do long exposure on the sky do it. It’s looks amazing especially once you fiddle with it. But to do that you need your camera to have a high ISO setting set and some light to little light along with being a good distance away from any big city. I personally love doing black and white or portrait shoots of people as they do something

    • zxzxzx says:

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      I’ve done a bit of night photography and star trails too. It’s hard to get away though, and it takes a lot of patience sometimes 🙂

  2. Phobos says:

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    Nicely captured

  3. Anonymous says:

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    Looks cool as hell.

  4. Zeo says:

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    Long exposure, its Interesting. Good man 😀

  5. CrimsonDarkness406 says:

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    That looks awesome man! ?

  6. Aditya says:

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    Ultimate bro

     

    You seriously nailed it