First Artistic photo experiment. Slow shutter speeds and colour

ISO 200    50mm+zooming and spinning out    f/5.6     0.6sec

After watching one of Bryan Petersons YouTube videos ‘Spinning and Zooming-Creative Photography Ideas and Images’ I decided to try my own take on this idea. In Bryan's video, using slow shutter speeds he would spin and zoom while shooting pictures in the park, ending up with some pretty neat creative pictures. So naturally I wanted to give it a go. After taking a few shots, I decided I wanted more vivid colours for my shots, something to take it a little further. So this is how this series of photos came about.

ISO 200        28mm+zooming out        f/4.0          0.6sec

I started off by setting up the shot. I got some multicoloured fairy-lights and some tinsel from the box of Christmas decorations, also to make it a bit more interesting I used an object in the center.

I started off by putting my lens cap in the center and started doing some test shots. As I wanted to keep the shutter speed low I was shooting in Shutter Priority mode, after doing a few tests I found 1.6sec gave me the best results.

The first picture (as was the picture in my blog heading) was taken in my kitchen under normal lighting conditions.

In an attempt to get even greater colour contrast, I moved the setup into a darkened room. I also added a mask in to the center, which made for some very interesting shots indeed.

Left ISO 200    75mm f/5.3 /10sec     Right     ISO 200    92mm+zooming out    f/5.6    0.8sec 

After entertaining myself with this for some time I got the idea to try moving the lights around rather than the camera, which led to this next series of photos.

In order to do this I first had to mount the camera on a tripod and set the timer on the camera. Then, keeping the camera in the same settings as before (Shutter priority mode at 1.6 seconds,) I started to play, pressing the shutter release button on timer with one hand and swinging a set of fairy-lights with the other.

ISO 100 38mm    f/4.5    1.6 sec

ISO 100    38mm    f/4.5      1.6 sec

As I only had 1.6 seconds to make a movement with the fairy-lights I tried using multi exposures. On the Nikon D90 you can select 2 or 3 multi exposures, so I tried a few in both double and triple exposures. The multi exposures make my face look weird but I think the overall effect is pretty cool.



Three exposures    ISO 100     32mm   f/4.2  1.6sec



Two exposures using two different sets of fairy-lights
ISO 100     22mm   f/3.8   1.6sec

All these photos were taken using my AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR kit lens