This is a photograph I took this week.
The process for taking this picture was interesting enough that I thought I wanted to share.
It occurred to me as I took this picture, Photography is Weird. Now, I knew this already. We do a lot of strange things for pictures. We lay on the ground and point our cameras in strange directions to get that perfect shot. We hold leaves in front of the lens to look like we're taking a picture through a bush or from a tree. We hang from objects, hold out our cameras, and do all sorts of bold things for amazing pictures.
For this specific shot, the process was unique. Inspiration struck around 11:45 P.M., and I usually follow through when I am inspired late at night. I decided to use some lights I purchased over the Christmas holiday for photography, but had been too busy to do anything with until now.
This is a picture taken of the lights and their controller. They can be set to "stay on," "off," or "timer." On the timer setting, they alternate on every few hours. Although it was a nice setting, I had no use for it while taking pictures. The lights also used two AAA batteries.
The lights are called "Dewdrop" or "Fairy" lights for anyone interested in purchasing them. I have found them at Walmart, Target, and Amazon. Email me directly if you need help finding them online!
I started taking pictures of the lights, experimenting with different things. I used a 50mm Prime Lens on a Canon Rebel T3i, which is my only camera. I also shoot with an 18-135mm zoom lens, but I tend to use my prime lens. With my aperture set to 1.8, I was able to capture photographs of the tiny lights with only some of them in focus.
I took this picture with the lights simply laying on my bed. The faded flower pattern visible is from my quilt. I liked the effect, but I didn't love it. I wanted a more neutral background, so I looked around for options. There weren't a lot of them around. To be honest, my room is pretty cluttered, and everyone else in my house was asleep. At this point, it was past midnight.
I noticed the string of bulb lights hanging around the edge of my ceiling, and I wondered if that would work as a secondary background lighting. With my camera in one hand and the lights and controller in the other hand, I gave it a shot. I stood on my bed and pointed in the most neutral direction in my room.
The perfect result took some time, especially since the lights were swinging around a lot. I couldn't manually focus because both of my hands were occupied, and auto-focus didn't want to focus on such a delicate moving target. However, the results were most definitely worth the effort.
In case you wanted to know, my camera settings were Aperture 1.8, ISO 100, and Shutter Speed between 120 and 300. I only changed lighting with Shutter speed for the featured photographs.
I hope you enjoyed! I will be doing more photography blogs in the near future.
I liked this post before you where famous.