First of all the title of this post is not a drug related euphamism! Just before lockdown here in the UK, I got a project to survey 44 vehicle workshops around the UK including several in Scotland. I set my own timetable to drive around the UK and left myself a little time to shoot the Kelpies!
The Kelpies are a pair of 30 metre high horses head sculptures lit up with colour changing lights in a public park. I arrived just as it was getting dark in the blue hour and knew I could shoot these things from so many angles and in so many ways.
Rotating the Kelpies
Always trying to be different and I'm pretty certain this had never been done before, but I couldn't resist rotating the pair of horses heads! This is a relatively "short" long exposure of 6 seconds where I leave the camera stationary for approx 4 seconds then rotate the camera freehand for the remaining 2 seconds.
Zooming in on the Kelpies
There's only so many ways to shoot the same subject in the dark and this makes me try harder to be more creative and "think outside of the box" (That's a phrase I hate, sorry!).
Here I zoom pulled during a 6 second exposure where I worked out about 3 seconds with no movement and then for the final 3 seconds or so, I zoomed in or out slowly until the exposure ended. This is wierdly quite a lot of fun to do.....
Also available in green
These sculpures would unexpectedly or unpredictably change colour so I had to be quick with the camera rotations. I had quite a few misses where the colours would change half way through....
Arrival in the blue hour
Subjects like this always look good in the blue hour before dark. This is a "normal" shot of the Kelpies with added vignette for more drama.
I just can't help myself
I love a good camera rotation shot and here I isolated just one of the kelpies and rotated it four ways.
I really can't help myself....
Flip job
This is the kind of image that gets frowned upon in lightpainting circles but I couldn't resist doing a little Photoshop flip because it looks just so surreal! No lightpainting heaven for me....
About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in urbex and artistic model photography. I'm always on the lookout for someone to collaborate with; please don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to create art.
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