Burnt Out - Alien

Introduction

Sometimes opportunities just present themselves! For my Alien section of the Places module I had planned to take either the Mosques of Blackburn or sections of the Duralay factory. However, I had been reading Foto8 magazine and saw an article showing the forest fires. Within the same week an area that I regularly walk  had a series of moorland fires. I was struck by the colour of the burnt out undergrowth, its wasn't black but had this amazing deep deep blue. This, compared to the greenery of the surrounding area, made for a superb contrast.

I visited this site a couple of times morning and night to ascertain which light effected the burnt out undergrowth the best. My plan was to use the learning's from semester 1 on Magic Hour lighting. In the end it came down to location and which way the sun direction illuminated the area best. These shots were taken in the evening with the sun coming in  at 45 degrees to the burn area. The light just seems to kiss the spiral twigs adding to the depth of the compositions. I purposely chose DSLR due to the colours on offer. I could convert this to greayscale as images in 8 Magazine, but feel this effect would not do the final images justice. I used a low angel for capture, as I wanted to give the impression of a large area of burnt moorland. I used a 28mm lens which on a 3/4 frame camera provided a standard view - the nearest to how the eyes see. 

I wanted to blur the background to create a plain coloured canvas to accentuate the contracts between the burnt and non burnt out areas. To achieve this all the images have an f.stop of around f4. ISO is set to 280. The images on blogger (here) are not a punchy as the ones in Lightroom, they have lost a little depth when converting to Jpeg and reducing the quality to reduce file size.

Image Details:

Nikon D300

speed 100th second

f.stop f3.2

ISO 280

28mm prime lens

Image Details:

Nikon D300

speed 100th second

f.stop f4

ISO 280

28mm prime lens

Image Details:

Nikon D300

speed 100th second

f.stop f4.5

ISO 280

28mm prime lens

Image Details:

Nikon D300

speed 100th second

f.stop f3.2

ISO 280

28mm prime lens

Image Details:

Nikon D300

speed 100th second

f.stop f3.2

ISO 280

28mm prime lens

Image Details:

Nikon D300

speed 100th second

f.stop f4

ISO 280

28mm prime lens

Leaning Outcome:

1. When opportunities present themselves get off your bum and take them.

2. By visiting a place a number of times visualising the compositions you are likely to take helps plan the session to come. It also make you work in a different way. I have been working with Large Format, the process is slow and methodical and you are restricted by the number of shots you can take. This stops the fire gun approach to photography that is prevalent with DSLR. Taking large amounts of images and hoping some turn out. With this session I limited myself to as few a shots as possible. In the end I only took six (see above). Spending time on site and slowing everything down can be, in certain circumstances,  the best way to work.