In the start of a new series, we ask our members how they have created the photos they have uploaded to our gallery. First up is an explanation of how Stu Glen took his Painted Angel photo, using an interesting technique to paint light onto his subject, and this photo was our first Photo Of The Week. Every week a new photo is chosen and this is announced every week in our free newsletter, just click here to sign up.
I go through phases with my photography as probably everyone does. Personally I love the darker months of the year for evening and low light photography as there is so much to shoot due to the different look you can get and the more vibrant feel you can achieve compared with daytime.
Painting with light is a technique that I had read loads about but had never tried. I didn't have a torch powerful enough and the Metz flashgun I had would have just blasted everything in its path instead of being able to pick out the parts of an object selectively.
The Angel of the North was my target as I had driven past it many times and thought how great it would look illuminated in the evening against a dark sky. How can Gateshead council not have considered this? I don't know - but I thought I would make up for their oversight.
On this project I needed a powerful light so I went to my local DIY store and bought a 3.5 million candle power spot lamp. This is rechargeable from the car and has a powerful beam which is nearly narrow enough to be able to pick out details on the statue without lighting up the grass or the trees around the subject. My first dry run with the spotlight proved the beam was slightly too wide so that evening I made a hood for the spot-lamp to concentrate the beam of light more and to attempt to control the spill.
After another five overcast nights the evening I had wanted was here nice cloud detail and quite calm so off I went with my camera, Sigma 18-50 lens and a Benbo Trekker tripod. Later I replaced the tripod with a Manfrotto, which is a little easier to set up for this kind of shot. On getting to the statue I tested a few different angles on the subject and then settled on a front on approach because this is the most popular view of the structure and the one that people would recognise straight away.
The tripod was set up quite low looking up to the statue and the camera was mounted upon it. The camera was in aperture priority and I tried various apertures, from f11 to f22. I settled on f22 as it gave me the longest duration for the shutter to be open and I also used a Cokin ND filter to make it that little bit longer.
When the photograph was composed and ready to be taken I set mirror lock up to reduce the chances of any shake from the mirror slap and used a remote shutter cord so the camera was basically not touched. I took a series of images of the statue at differing focal lengths and while the shutter was open I used the spotlight in smooth slow strokes across the statue. This took some trial and error to get right or anywhere near satisfactory to my tastes.
The best thing for a shot like this is get a dark night and go and experiment! The results are subjective to the photographer and are not to everyone's tastes. The technique can be used in smaller places with less powerful lights or even flashguns. One of the items I read when researching the technique was done in a grave yard with just the grave stones lit with a manual flash which looked fantastic, maybe that is a project for this year in the cold winter nights.
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