Night Photography by Adam Currie

Swanwick Wood in Southampton is cool. It is a man made nature reserve with multiple lakes and plenty of things to photograph. In the day anyway! And as any readers of the blog will know that is not what I like to do.

Anyway, I milked what I could out of the place but came away with 3 or so shots I could use.

This is the main lake located by the visitors centre.

As you travel further into the wood there is another lake with a large hillside, this is a relatively long exposure which I managed to capture a few star trails. As you can see one star really stood out for some reason.

This is something a bit different, usually I will just photograph still objects and things that are easy to take photos of (You know.. stuff that doesn’t move!). This is a self portrait. The lighting was acheived with a Canon 430EX on full power from behind me.

As usual all images can be clicked, this will take you to the flickr site where you have the option to view the images larger.

I didn’t take many photos here as once you’ve taken a photo of the bridge you are pretty much done! The sheer scale of this bridge is truly amazing when you are up close to it. The pictures really don’t show the true scale.

Itchen bridge in Southampton

As you can see from the street lights that line the top of the bridge I was aiming for the “starburst” look. I achieved this by stopping down the aperture to f/11, a classic trick .

I took a couple more at Itchen Bridge. The set can be seen here.

More updates on the way in the near future! I have a bit of a backlog.

A few weeks ago I posted about the application I made with the flickr API. This has now evolved into an entire new website, I suppose you could say I’m going in the direction of FD’s flickr tools. I’m not copying it, or trying to compete by any means! I am simply just using it as a way of learning and maybe earning a little bit to contribute to its running.

So far the site still only contains the the tool that allows you to search for free-to-use images on flickr. I am in the process of creating the second tool, which I might add is going to pretty much kick ass. Seeing as you read this far:

Flickr Tools & Toys

Possibly one of the best places I have ever been to for Night Photography has to be Fort Southwick, and I hope that we can go back there. This site visit was kindly set up as a group visit for the Portsmouth At Night group by one of the members. We had the whole underground section to our selves and we were given hours to explore the place! Amazing.

What makes Fort Southwick such an amazing place for Night Photography (or any photography come to think of it) is everything in the underground tunnels has been left un-touched since the second world war, this allows for some nice retro style photos!

Despite my lack of colored gels that night I did manage to get some usable images.

These were found in the kitchen area.

Down one of the longest tunnels we found, the area behind where this one was taken was used as a film set. Some of the film set still remains, one of these being a mounting point for a noose.

The central stair well, the majority of the tunnels meet at this spiral stair case.

More Fort Southwick photos can be seen in the flickr set.

Sadly, planning permission has been granted to renovate parts of the fort into modern accommodation or office space, this could mean some of the original elements of the Fort could soon be destroyed. I am glad we got in there when we did, and hope to do so again before anything is done to the Fort.

More information about Fort Southwick:

• Subterranea Britannica – Fort Southwick
• Portsdown Tunnels
• Wikipedia page about Fort Southwick

I don’t often do light painting in the form of light trails, I’m usually more into the colored flashgun technique. The reason for me doing these photos was actually because of a small incident involving a friends car being stuck in some stones. A long story which I really don’t want to bore you with here.

I’m going to do some more light writing and drawing in the future as I think you can be far more creative with a set of colored LEDs than you can with a flash gun and some gels(Well, maybe sometimes… not always!).

This took two people to create as to get the sky exposed perfectly and balanced with the car needed a short exposure! (This was taken at dusk)

This is meant to be fire, the smoke was created by me moving slowly in the background. It worked.. sort of!

This one speaks for its self really. I based it on this sort of thing.

More light painting / drawing can be seen in the flickr set.