Friday, July 1, 2011

Vanished...With a Trace: a theatrical narrative of long exposure night photography

     So the first few weeks of this summer I took a Night and Low light photography class.  A lot of what we shoot are daytime outdoor weddings, but ocassionally we get to shoot receptions that carry on into the night or may someday have a candlelit wedding ceremony.  I thought this particular class would be a good excuse to play with the settings on my camera as well as practice with high ISO's, long shutter speeds, and low light situations.  I had three weeks to come up with and execute a final project; which was to be made up of a 10 photo series.  As I was walking my dogs one night by the playground one of the swings on the swingset was swinging, but nobody was there?  Was it the wind?  Is somebody there?  Thus, I knew I had a concept brewing. 

     When I started this project I wanted to capture the stillness of the night and experiment with long exposure.  I then realized that the stillness was boring, so I added a single aspect or item to each photo that would create drama, movement, or tension in the photo but keep the inherent stillness.  I was hoping to pose many questions in each photo.  What happened?  How long ago?  Who's doing these things? etc.  I've always hated the orangeness of street lights but in these photos it become another motif that I decided to work with.  My intent was to build the tension and the suspense through each photo.  I find shooting with a tripod more challenging than shooting handheld.  I hope everyone enjoys this series.  Take your time looking through each one.  Put yourself in the shoes of a person walking this path and finding these items.  What conclusions do you draw from each place?  Ask yourselves the question an investigator would ask.  Do you naturally start to build a story in your head like I did?  


So what do you think happened?  Comment below with your story!

The full set of photos can be seen in larger size on our Flickr page.

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