Camping With Lights, Camera and…Fisheyes!?
This past weekend, Moose was kind enough to let me get my hands on one of his fisheyes lenses while I was camping with my boyfriend Aaron for his birthday at Collier Seminole State Park (What a fun campground!) But before using the fisheye lens, I made sure to take some wildlife photos for Moose.
Once we got that out of the way, we ventured around taking tons of photos all day with this great fisheye.
Most of them goofy, of course.
So we took a break from goofing around and relaxed with some fishing on the dock, with only little nibbles but no catch of the day. I am going to take a wild guess that the gator that was hanging out by the dock probably ate them all. But who knows…Well anyway, then it came time to make dinner, cooked on the fire pit. Yummy! And there was this warm light, glowing on Aaron’s face from the fire. I just had to grab out a camera and, well, as Moose would say, “Make some simple clicks.” So I did.
Well then I had an idea! “Ooo! I have an idea! (duh) Paint with light from the fire!”
And then it was my turn to try it out. I kept the same settings and just got Aaron to make the click for me.
Which, as a side note, makes me wonder, if person “S”sets up the camera with all of its settings but then person “A” presses the button, who gets the final photo credit? Hmm…
Aaron was a little confused as to how this could all possibly be working out the way it was. So to try and explain with a visual, I got out the flashlight and we started drawing shapes and such. The shutter (so long as it’s open – known as dragging the shutter) captures the light and keeps that information in the camera, and just by using the on camera flash (rear flash setting) that last flash is what captured the main subject, in this case being me or Aaron.
While “chimping” (another Moose word meaning “making ooh…aah sounds when looking at the photos”) at the photos we had just taken. I saw that one of the photos (you see on the left) looked kind of like half of a heart. So with the tripod handy, I set the camera up on it and got Aaron to draw a heart with the flashlight. And with the push of a button I hopped in the photo and, well voila!
This photo above does have the sunburts and such because Aaron held the flashlight directly at the camera and forgot to turn it off, but I liked how it turned out. It took many attempts to get the heart just right, and our heads in the heart just right, and even the kiss just right. So with many attempts (not that we minded) and a lot of practice, we ended up getting some great shots!
During one of our attempts Aaron started to draw the heart but I could see he was pointing it directly into the camera, which at that point I didnt want the sunburst look, so I pulled his hand down and walked away to start the shot over… Well it actually turned out to be a pretty funny photo.
So with that time we took taking photos, the fire’s flames started to die down, so while Aaron was reviving the fire, I snuck in a few of my own experiments painting with the light and these were some of the results:
As you can see (although they make for some interesting photos) the light on my face from the flashlight is just too harsh. I just so happened to look over behind the camera and see the way the light from a camping lamp was kissing the side of Aaron’s face. So I grabbed it and got Aaron to hold it for me. I pushed down the button and with each side step I took, he turned the lamp on and off. Which ended up being my most favorite photo.
So kids, the lesson here today is: Go camping all the time ’cause it’s so darn fun!
Oh no, wait, er, what I meant was, even if you are somewhere (like camping) that you normally wouldn’t think you would end up taking photos at, bring it anyway, because you never know what you will come up with. Plus, when your bored, its more fun then playing card games!
And experiment with light!
SIDE NOTE: I WILL BE POSTING THE CAMERA SETTINGS AND INFO FROM THESE PHOTOS ASAP :)
(So you are just going to have to come back and read this post again! Muahaha!)