Having discovered the work of Andreas Levers, I was eager to get out at the first opportunity and try to capture some artificial lighting, augmented by ‘poor’ weather for myself. I knew that what I was going to achieve would be different to what he is presenting, as I did not want to make use of Photoshop (at this moment in time). The best conditions I could hope for came along after a couple of weeks waiting. Although it was not the fog or mist that help to make Levers’ work so good, it was enough to help me along with this exercise. My subject lighting was confined to both Tungsten & LED street lamps.
My first batch are of LED lighting.
At the time of taking the images, I was convinced that the light was a pure white light. However, close inspection of these images shows that there is a violet/purple hue to them. This can also be said of fluorescent lighting, when viewed it appears to be pure white light, but in photographs it comes out as a cool blue light. Like fluorescent lighting, shadows are often lost because of the dispersion from the light source, unlike tungsten bulbs. For me LED has the best form of lighting of the three sources discussed. It has the warmth of Tungsten, though not so pronounced, and the ability to lose harsh shadows like the fluorescent bulbs.
My next stop was to capture some Tungsten lit areas.
The light source itself, when viewed by the naked eye appears golden/yellow, which then seeps into everything it illuminates. It gives everything a warm glow because it is such a strong colour source and so capturing this warmth is very easy. The first four images are heavily tinged with green, and this is obviously because the foliage is acting as a filter for the strong light source. However, when you look to the directly lit areas in each image they are clearly of a golden hue.
Comparing rainy night shots with day-lit shots is not ideal, but looking at my images from Exercise 4.2, it highlights just how clear and pure naturally lit subjects are. They achieve, again not in the best of conditions, a clarity that artificial lighting struggles to come close to. That said, artificial lighting has the ability to transform ordinary day-to-day scenes into something more abstract. I think that if I were to take a daylight shot of the ‘Bus Stop’ image and place it alongside the one above, viewers would be naturally inclined to spend longer studying the tungsten image than they would the daylight shot.
Contact sheet
The first twenty-three shots are all under LED lighting in one specific location. Initially it was about getting the exposure/shutter speed combination right. Into the mix was thrown the constant problem of keeping the camera and lens dry. As can be seen from some of the latter shots, there are some very nice images produced where I have allowed the rain to settle on the lens. Shots seven and eight show some distinct camera shake, which was also an ever-present problem which was coped with, in the main, by a steady hand and a tripod. This was easier and less time-consuming than trying to use a remote shutter release device. Most of the shots have been repeated to ‘cover’ the potential spoiling of a shot by rain on the lens. I had noticed that there was a purple hue present under the LED lighting, and wanted to see if it was present on any other surfaces, so this is the reason for the three images of the bonnet of my truck. From these images you can see that the hue is still present (particularly in the last of the three.
Moving on to the last set of twelve images, these were all taken under Tungsten street lights. Knowing what the general outcome would be, I was eager to see what results would be achieved by filtering the light through trees. It was interesting to see the results being that the purple hue is largely lost to the green cast by the foliage of the trees. Again, some of the shots were replicated to try to get an alternative/cover to rain drops on the camera lens. Although this did bring to mind my thoughts on Sally Mann’s work and also that of Venetia Dearden whereby they are not afraid to shoot into the sun, thus changing the mood of image all together.
I see! 