Painting with Light

"Painting is by nature a luminous language." - Robert Delaunay

     The third weekly assignment for Small Format is a photo that uses the only the light from our own flashes, which are set off to illuminate different areas of the scene during the same exposure. Isabel and I wanted to practice our timing, aim, and flash settings while we could help each other figure out an effective system. We each shot different scenes within the apartment; this image was shot at f/5.6 for 30 seconds at ISO 200. I wanted to see how much ground we could cover in thirty seconds when we could only move in the dark, so I had my camera at 35mm as close to our front door as possible.

     One of my youth leaders from my church back home had given me three Kodak gel filters (No.15, 25, and 58) that she bought from the RCC bookstore when she was in school. I thought the best way to see the effectiveness each flash location was to have a different color light in each area, which worked rather well. This style is not what I'm looking for in my final image, but it was a lot of fun to play around with ideas and techniques in the comfort of our own home (and pajamas).