6 hour photo project - Natural light

homerun_homer

I'm doing an assignment that requires me to take a photo of a subject of my choosing in natural light, every half hour for 6 hours, and then I've to explain what I was trying to achieve.

I just read the brief this morning and I'm trying to think of possibilities. It's a bad time of year to be hanging outside for 6 hours and don't like the idea of my camera sitting idle all that time.
I was thinking maybe I could go to a famous local attraction like Bunratty castle and do that from the afternoon to evening time but I was wondering what do you think you would do if you had to do that same thing?

It's not something you can waste time doing, realise the idea didn't work and then start over again, I'll only have Sunday's to try and do this as I work all week which only leaves dark evenings.

beans

Are there any areas around your workspace that get any natural light? You might be able to incorporate this into your working week.

Just a thought, as I only this morning noticed the lovely sun-play on the blinds in my office and thought how great it would be to have a camera here...

homerun_homer

beans wrote: »

Are there any areas around your workspace that get any natural light? You might be able to incorporate this into your working week.

Just a thought, as I only this morning noticed the lovely sun-play on the blinds in my office and thought how great it would be to have a camera here...

Not really, will have to have a long, hard look and a think about that one but there is nothing inspirational about this office I like the idea of getting away with doing it in here though since a lot of the time lately I have nothing to do.

AnCatDubh

Sounds like an exercise to get you to understand / appreciate how natural light effects subjects over time - the soft morning light versus the hard/harsh midday light.

This would be most dramatic on a clear day / good sunlight. At the moment the sun can be quite low and you don't get that much of it, but like this morning there is some wonderful light out there which i'm assuming will change dramatically.

Given the brief has a 6 hour timing on it, something that would include an element of time is probably expected - a clock in the background, the shadow cast by a sundial (assumes you've gotten sun), different peoples watches showing the time at the foreground of the scene. Maybe a scene from a busy place - if you could organise access to a well lit busy waiting area of a building perhaps.

Hope it goes well for you.

Fajitas!

Does each photograph have to be from the same position?

jen_23

Does it have to be outside? Just thinking you could sit a subject by a window and use the natural light from the window to do a few portraits. Ive seen something similar to that before which was really nice.
Ancatdubh had a good idea about incorporating time into it. So you could always hand a large clock over the window or have the subject hold one.

homerun_homer

jen_23 wrote: »

Does it have to be outside? Just thinking you could sit a subject by a window and use the natural light from the window to do a few portraits. Ive seen something similar to that before which was really nice.
Ancatdubh had a good idea about incorporating time into it. So you could always hand a large clock over the window or have the subject hold one.

Love the idea of incorporating time into it. The brief is so short it doesn't specifically say whether it has to be outside or whether the shots all have to be from the same spot.

Dragan

homerun_homer wrote: »

Love the idea of incorporating time into it. The brief is so short it doesn't specifically say whether it has to be outside or whether the shots all have to be from the same spot.

Well just go with the theory that restrictions are written down, everything else is up to you.

smelltheglove

I would assume that it would need to be in the same place. I reckon what you could do is take the 30 minute intervals with a tripod in the same place. So on every hundred and hundred30 hour you take a shot. Then you can leave the tripod where it is and every 15 and 45 take different pictures. You will then be able to decide afterwards.

Not many places you can go with only natural light that will also show the time. I have 2 ideas for you though. Maybe at a picnic table in a park or something where you can lay an open watch that will show in the corner of the frame, this could work out really really nice imo.

2nd idea is a square with buildings around. You would get drastic changes with the movement of the sun. One that comes to mind is the plaza in park west, an open area surrounded by high buildings which cast large shadow. Through the 6 hours you would have the shadows moving quite a bit giving you the changes of natural light.

Hugh_C

Simple enough:

1. find someone who'll drive you to your chosen location and pick you up later
2. find a location next to a nice pub which does hot ports / whiskies and Sports TV
3. bring some chalk to mark you subject and camera positions.
4. take a picture every half hour.
5. go for a drink 5 minutes after every half hour.
6. repeat.

Not sure where you are in the country but you can let the sun do your work to show the passage of time. So if you were to start at say 10.30 in the morning, you'd get in late morning, noon, afternoon and dusk - it gets dark around 4.30 photographically speaking.

As smell suggests, you could take your tripod and do intervals but I suspect that's a sledgehammer to crack a nut unless you're planning a major time-lapse sequence; you could mark your tripod position (or camera position if you don't have a tripod) and your subject position and just recreate it each time you take a snap.

Hugh

latchiko

That sounds like an interesting project!

Another idea might be to go much wider and include the sun in the shots and track its movement across the sky during the 6 hours and include something in the foreground/middleground which is being affected by the sun. Bunratty Castle might be a good example as you have suggested depending on where the shadow will be cast. There are plenty other places locally too, maybe Poulnabrone dolmen or other places in the Burren. Or you could drive up to the "golf ball" and with a long lens track the changes in Limerick city over the 6 hours.

Another tip might be to do it over a full day rather than 6 hours and then choose which end (morning or evening) worked better on the day.

Whatever you choose I'd love to see your results!

homerun_homer

latchiko wrote: »

Whatever you choose I'd love to see your results!

If I do an ok job then I will post the results but as I've no deadline I could be a while:o Hopefully not though in this case. Once I decide what, where and when I can do this task I'll try get it done asap. This 6 hours thing is daunting especially over Christmas time, not much room to get things done.

Covey

You could also combine the exposure effect into the shot.

If you chose a fixed aperature, say f13 f16 and then the effect of the changing light on your exposure would be dramatic as the light gets worse.

You end up with very different pics from exactly the same spot.

TheNorthBank

I'm new to this whole photography thing so I don't even know if this would work but perhaps if you were to start out at around 11:00 am (very bright) until 17:00 (dark) and using the same time and aperature settings on your camera for every shot, you'll end up with the same picture taken 13 times in different light conditions (bright to dark), you then merge them as a HDR image so your final result is 1 picture that took 6 hours to take.

Like I said, this mightn't even be possible so correct me if I'm way out on this.

ThOnda

The morning fog on the way to Galway was beautiful, I could recommend areay that gets mists in the morning that disappear with the first rays of sun. That would be fantastic. I can see a lonely tree, just a silouhette in the mist (in the first picture) and shining golden leaves in the last picture.

DaireQuinlan

what about setting up a pinhole camera with half hour exposures, changing the film every half an hour. Sun in the frame. You'll get the entire track of the sun recorded for the 6 hours, but across 12 seperate exposures. Neater than 12 different instantaneous exposures IMO.

Peace

If it was the summer time you could do it on a flower opening and closing. Now there are plenty of spots you could do the tide coming and going?

What will you do if it starts raining in middle of the day?

homerun_homer

Peace wrote: »

What will you do if it starts raining in middle of the day?

Exactly, I've got to choose wisely or I could end up messing up my camera and lenses if outdoors and the weather takes a turn, and could end up wasting many days if it needs a few attempts.

Anouilh

Opening the window in your workplace and working on what is outside might be nice. People, cars going by?

homerun_homer

Anouilh wrote: »

Opening the window in your workplace and working on what is outside might be nice. People, cars going by?

:pac: I wish, not much to see out the windows. Plus they are locked for security reasons - also big fight internally amongst departments about the room temperature so opening a window will not go down well:(

Anouilh

Perhaps in that you have your theme?

Post-modernist searches for natural light in an artificial environment?