Moon Dance

Genevieve dances with the moon.

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Film Noir - Experiments in Low-Key Lighting

This Is What It Sounds Like...


Associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style, film noir (French for black film) has roots that stretch back all the way to the 15th and 16th century. The low-key lighting creates moods reminiscent of 15th century chiaroscuro (Italian for clear-dark) and 16th century tenebrism from the Italian tenebroso ("murky"), techniques using high contrasts of light and dark to create moody and darkly foreboding art.



Piper Walks Down Art Alley


The Seven Deadly Sins - Lust


Film Noir is a term coined in the 1940's by French critic Nino Frank. Used primarily to describe Hollywood's crime dramas made through out the 1940's and 50's using the Low-Key German Expressionist cinematography style from the 1920's. However the term is rather ambiguous and it is hard to pin down a specific genera of film. As over the years many films from crime, drama, horror, sci-fi, and even westerns have used the lighting elements of low-key film noir. That is the one thing that makes a picture or movie Film Noir, the dark and contrasty lighting.



Young Mother


The Kickback


Leah - Noir

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Painting with Light

A fun experiment for any photographer is light painting. The concept is very simple, light painting is a technique were the exposure is made in a dark area by selectively illuminating parts of the subject with a movable light source. The light I use is often a flashlight or a camera strobe with different color gel filters.



The above photo was taken in the dark of night. It is a 1/2 second exposure at ISO 1600 and the light comes from a passing car... I was going to use a flash to fill the photo but the car beat me to it. But this shows how lightpainting can be done to make interesting patterns in an otherwise standard photo.


A very simple use of lightpainting, this exposure lasted 15 seconds at ISO 200. As the moon backlit the scene I moved to the right side of the picture and holding a magenta gel over the flash popped off a few bursts of light. Yes it is that simple.


Another much longer exposure (116 seconds) from the same shoot, you can see the movement from the model. In this photo I used a cyan filter on the left side and popped off about 3 bursts of light. I then moved to the right and popped off 1 burst of light with a yellow filter. Just before closing the shutter I added some green light which I bounced off a screen to the ground.


Light painting can also be done by moving a point light source in the photo itself. In this image Amanda just held her position while I moved an LED flashlight around her.


In this photo which can be seen at the top of the page uses two colors with the flash a heavy blue gel just to the right and slightly above the camera and a magenta gel directly to the right of the model at her eye level. The red on Sam's boot comes from a large red neon light located on the roof of a building behind her.

So here are the basics of what you need to do this yourself. First you need a camera that you can lock the shutter open, this is normally called bulb mode. Most cameras will also need a shutter release cable. I have had some exposures go for multiple minutes. You will therefor need a sturdy tripod to set your camera on.
A light source, this could be a flashlight or a strobe and some color gels are nice to have also. The gels I use are the same that are used for stage lighting. They come in sheets that can be cut to fit the flash. You can order them online or they can often be found at your local music store.
After that you just need to use your imagination.


A simple lighting scheme using 3 filters cyan, red, and light orange.


Here I planed out this shot to take advantage of Laurens placement in the yellow flowers and the light gray colored rocks knowing that a cyan flash would make the yellow pop out and the rocks would take the color of the flash. I strategically placed Mat, the demon, so that the red flash on him would compliment the red tones in the sky. The purple in the middle of the photo was a consequence of the red and cyan flashes adding together.


This is also a bit more complex photograph. Lauren and I coordinated her slowly standing up while I popped off alternating colors of green-blue and red-orange.

I hope this will encourage you to try something new and different with some of your photos. The worse that will happen is you will get a blur or nothing at all. However when these photos work the results can be amazing.
After years of playing around with this technique I can now do it like second nature and I always end up with a great photo shoot.

Coming soon I will talk about how light and color work which should help with blending color filters in a photo and how they will affect objects and each other. However the best thing you can do is just go out and play around with it. Learning by doing is key in photography.

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Portraits

I love to shoot photos of people! I find it amazing how intimate it is and how you really get to know a person.

This is required to create a portrait and not just any old photo.

The objective is to create an image representative of the person, not just a snap shot and unlike modeling a product or advertising photo were you don't care about the models personality.

When creating a portrait one must work with the model to get them to open up beyond other forms of modeling. You must get them to reveal a vital part of there soul to you and then capture that glimpse.

You have to talk with the model, find out what they really like, what are there dreams, what do they want, who do they love, even there fave song. Anything to make them feel comfortable. Because if they are not your work is less likely to make an impact.

If they are happy and having fun and opening up you can then get inside them if even for only the time of the shoot.

It makes a world of difference and if you can build a good report with your model it opens up a world of opportunities to explore other areas of art with them. Such as creating complex conceptual pieces.

Honestly, some of the best friendships and relationships I have had and some of the best models I have found started with a simple portrait shoot.

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