Captured by Light

What I'm doing right now that's exciting is a fusion of different approaches to photography. I'm shooting images in a panoramic format, wide screen if you like, because that is the way our eyes see things.

What makes this exciting? Because I'm not using a landscape camera, nor do I crop the image down, using, say, only the bottom part of an image.

I combine the image from separate shots all shot at the same moment - this means I compose the shot in my head before I even lift the camera up, and shoot fast, panning to the left or right as I shoot to get images such as the one below. In a strong breeze, the young boy wrapped himself in a red cloth, and in triumph or celebration, struck a sudden aggressive pose. I had been watching, took the shot as he hit the pose, then panned left and took two more shots as quickly as possible, recording him and his environment at the moment of action. The final image below was assembled from the three images.

I use software to digitally combine the seperate images, and touch up the image to remove any glitches or hiccups the software leaves in. Check out the WTF link for more info on why this is such an exciting way to work.

In this image, I focused on the girl posing - I used auto focus to grab her quick, then flipped the auto focus off and panned right for three more quick images. If I don't flick the auto-focus off, the woman on the right would have been in focus and the background blurred, which can be disconcerting. Actually, I didn't even see the woman on the right when I began shooting, she walked into the shot, which shows how the image is both composed, and yet has random elements out of my control.

This image is composed of four images shot quickly. If you look hard, you can find the seams, the nuts and bolts of my picture construction, in some of the images. I'm not interested in making them seamless, I want to show the image and it's context, at the moment of shooting.

That's what I'm focusing on now, plus a book project. More fun stuff here on the site, go through and take a look!