Walking night photoshoot in London

Something I've wanted to try for a long time is a night shoot, using available light (ie street lighting).  So while I was in London recently with some spare time in the evening I took the opportunity to invite a couple of my favourite models to shoot and made it happen.

After a long day of shooting at Hooks Gym in Royale Park I made my way over to the meeting point, the Park Plaza Westminster Hotel.  Silly me for thinking that traffic on a Sunday evening in London would be fairly light.  90 minutes and 10 miles later I finally arrived.  I hate being late, but on this occasion it worked out just fine, as both models were running later than I was.

My two models for the evening were Ina "talks alot" Gutowska (who I'd recently worked with on the Gaspari calendar shoot) and Emma Burrows, who I'd been shooting with 13 other girls at Hooks Gym for most of the day.  Just so you know who is who, Ina has dark hair, and Emma is the blonde.


Technical bit...  I used the Canon 5D Mark II with a 50mm f1.4 lens for the shoot.  I had it wide open the whole time at f1.4, and went from ISO 400 to 3200 throughout the shoot depending on the levels of light we could find.  As mentioned I only used available light "stolen" from street lamps, shop windows etc.

Trying to auto focus black on black was not easy, next time I think I'll bring along and use a torch to aim at the subject while I'm focussing the shot.  I tried this technique on my experimental self portraits a few days ago and it worked rather well.


I've never done a walking photoshoot of any kind before, but it was rather interesting.  We walked almost 3 miles and stopped to shoot at anywhere we found that we liked the look off, from alley ways, to a Christmas tree in Covent Garden. 

Ina & Emma were great, and thankfully it wasn't that cold (for a Novembers evening).


Most amusing part of the shoot was while we were shooting by the door that "James Bond" walks through on the film "Die Another Day".  He disappears down to an abandoned fictional underground station.  I'm not sure who got the bigger shock when the door opened, the guys coming out, or the girls!

Experimental night self portraits

Last week I was inspired by the work of another photographer.  He'd created these amazing images all by using light and long exposures.  So inspired was I, that I headed out into a cold November night, not to copy, but to try something similar.

How did I do it?

Quite easy really, 30 second exposure on the camera, and then I just stood relatively still and aimed a very bright torch (the Armytek Predator if it's important to anyone), at myself.  It was dark enough that I could move a bit and it not to really matter.

Where my legs are "see through", I just aimed the torch at my legs, and then moved out of the picture for the final few seconds of the exposure while aiming the torch, just behind where I'd been standing.

Painting with light is rather fun, and I shall be doing it again soon.  Next time though I hope to be using a pretty girl instead of a fat photographer as the "model"!

Lots more luck than any skill or judgement, but some fun photos resulted.  These are a few of my favourite photos from the evenings experimentation. 

Update:  I almost forgot to mention the "ghost walk" that was happening while we were shooting on the old walls of Southampton.  A little bit of research on Twitter later and I've found out that it was "The Sarah Siddons Fan Club Theatre Company Present Halloween Ghost Walks - Harry Houdini’s Horrible Halloween".  It's interesting making a bit of a dick out of yourself waving around a torch while 50 or so people look on while being entertained by "ghosts"!

London at night

If anyone suggests to me that I try and do day-time, and night-time photos of London in the same afternoon / evening again, I may have to hurt them.   Fatigue had very much set in by the time it was dark enough to do night photography, so the amount of effort put into these pictures was not nearly as much as it should have been.  Still some pleasing ish results.  It's a subject I plan on returning to throughout the winter months.