As I was shooting cars at night, I decided to shoot in London as I knew there would be a lot of cars on the road at night. This made the shoot easier for me as I did not have to sit around waiting for cars to pass. When I first started shooting for shoot 10, I found it quite difficult and my pictures were not turning out the way I had wanted them to. The lights from the cars were not elongated, but were just small blurred dots. Although this still looked like effectively out of focus, it was not the effect I had wanted to try out. I adjusted the settings on the camera and realised that I needed to lower the shutter speed. After I changed this to the lowest setting, the pictures started coming out a lot better and the effect I wanted to create was visible. After this moment I didn't find the shoot at all challenging. I decided to experiment with the flash, to see if the elongated lights would still be created, however I thought the images looked a lot better without it, as the vivid lights contrasted against the dark surroundings more significantly. I noticed that busses created a lot more elongated lights, and a more interesting image than cars, so I specifically looked out for these. It wasn't hard to spot them due to the location I was in. When It came to editing, I wanted to enhance the vivid lights and make them contrast even more against the very dark background. I noticed when editing the images that if I increased the exposure, buildings and other objects in the background that I did not spot in the darkness began to become visible. In some cases I found that this extra detail improved the image as it filled up empty space in the frame.
As well as having difficulty with camera settings, Most of the pictures did not turn out as good as I thought they would. After looking at some pictures online, I thought that the lines of light would be able to be seen a lot further into the distance, and one picture in particular gave me the idea that I might be able to capture the light travelling around bends. None of my images ended up like this, but just as long solid lines. Although they did display movement, because they were so straight they might not be recognisable as cars. To overcome this I could have used an even lower shutter speed so that the lights could be seen far into the distance, however this was the lowest setting my camera would go. Effective images like the ones I had seen online would be more easily achieved using a camera with a larger variation of settings.
Progression
I want to continue photographing light into my next shoot. Because this shoot wasn't so successful, I want to try and shoot a different sort of light in order to get different and hopefully more successful results. Thinking back, one of the most successful shoots I have done was a portrait shoot, so I want to combine both light and portraits. One way I could do this is throughout light graffiti. Like this shoot, it involves a low shutter speed in order to show the clear path of light. As I would have someone else move the light around, I could show their face in a portrait style. Because I want to show the details of the person, I would have to use flash.
The picture below is an example of the sort of photos I would like to create. The path of the light is very clear, and contrasts significantly against the black background. It fills up the plain empty frame space and makes the image a lot more interesting. As well as the light, the mans face is clearly shown, and the tones in his skin are visible due to lighting.
I think that my next shoot will be enjoyable and I will end up with some interesting, unique and hopefully successful pictures.
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