Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Three Lightpainters, Two Trapped Fingers and One Cold Night....
There's something quite eerie about a medieval monastery. Roche Abbey in South Yorkshire sits in a shallow valley surrounded by rocky but short cliffs with a river running through. The result is the valley can sometimes be noticeably colder as you walk in with it's micro climate. I can easily see why some people would be freaked out by this place.
So when @inksurgeon, @neilru75 and I ventured through the woodland to access Roche Abbey, @inksurgeon was convinced he'd heard clip clopping horses! I heard nothing and don't believe in all that nonense!
The aim of the night was to light up the monastery in the dark under a moonlit sky. We would have preferred to shoot star trails on this clear night but the full moon was so bright we stuck to waving lights instead. I prefer to think we'd scare any ghouls away with out fangled magical LED lights!
As we arrived at the monastery, it was necessary to climb over a fence. Now I'm built for comfort and not for speed and climbing over a 4 foot wire fence is mostly undignified in my case. The @inksurgeon very kindly helped me over the fence and in doing so managed to trap his fingers between the wires right at the moment I stood on them. Ouch!! His gloves now contain dried up blood but he appears to have all his fingers intact!
This is a sample of what I got tonight, all shot with a Sony A7iii and the very sharp Sony 20mm f1.8 lens. I've visited here many times before and over the years my gear has improved as I upgrade and I have to say I'm pleased with the quality. (They should be, this gear cost me enough!)
Subtle
Lately I've tried to be more subtle in my approach to lighting stuff up in the dark. Keeping it simple. This one took me a while to find the right point of view and the grounds in the abbey now have many stab holes from the spikes on my tripod!
Less Subtle
The moon tonight was probably in the wrong place for my liking and it was necessary to move off centre to avoid the big bright thing in the sky appearing in my shot. I placed several RGB LED cubes around the scene and preferred the warm white colours.
Even less subtle
After the above shot, I changed the colour on the RGB cubes pointing to the outside of the monastery walls. The combination of the red inside and the blue outside makes the arches on the towers either side appear pink in hue.
Behind the scenes shot
Here @neilru75 is poses under one of the arches for his shot. We aim to come back with different images and it's quite useful to bag a behind the scenes shot.
Night landscape
This is a plain and simple 30 second exposure with absolutely no lighting other than moonlight. This type of shot is on my bucket list to nail and I'm keen to do more with suitable subjects.
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.
Social Media
https://www.facebook.com/fastchrisuk
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fastchris/
Lightpainting is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source while taking a long exposure photograph, either to illuminate a subject or to shine a point of light directly at the camera, or by moving the camera itself during exposure. Nothing is added or removed in post processing.
If you would like to see more lightpainting please give the Lightpainters United Community a follow and you will be introduced into the illuminating world of light painting!
If you want to see more examples of lightpainting, feel free to check out these guys:
Mafu Fuma | Oddballgraphics | FadetoBlack | DAWN | Mart Barras | Stefan Stepke | Nikolay Trebukhin | Lee Todd | Stabeu Light | Maxime Pateau | Stephen Sampson | lightandlense | Neil Rushby | L.A.C.E.
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What a wonderful job you do with lights...! It's awesome¡ Congratulations!
Of course, the place helps a lot to get such exciting shots!
Thanks @ylich I like to think the god fearing medieval monks that lived and worked here would have regarded me as some kind of demon with my LED lights ;-)
Hahaha, they were lucky to not meet you! 😂
These are really damn good. I love the light shining out of the building; just superb.
Thanks @wwwiebe I would shoot this kind of stuff all the time if I could find gems like this place :-)