Shooting a magician in the dark

After he saw my experimental night-time self portraits, magician, friend and sometimes client Paul Newton asked me to do something similar of him.  Turns out he'd had the idea in his mind for some time, but hadn't been able to get his idea across to any photographers.

So off we trotted one cold mid Novembers evening to one of the darkest places I know in Southampton that has a view, Mayflower Park.

The exposure time for all of the photos was 30 seconds, which for those of you who know Paul is rather a long time for him to stand still and not talk.  The lighting came from me, walking quickly around Paul with a torch, and because I kept moving with little or no light falling on me, I don't show up in the photos.

Now I'm sure a Photoshop expert could probably create a better end result, probably without the need to get so cold, but I'm a bit of a purist where these things are concerned and I like doing it "for real".  Anything else for me is cheating.

My approach is a bit hit and miss, all of the photos were lit differently, but after taking around 50 images we got a couple that we both really like.  A happy client and a happy photographer, what more could you ask for?  I think the final image of the three is my favourite.

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.

Salisbury by Night

Note to self.  When going on a night shoot, always, I repeat always, make sure you have a tripod with you.

As you may have gathered I foolishly forgot my tripod for my excursion to Salisbury last week.  It wasn't the end of the world, it just forced me to rethink the shots I had in my mind and do try something different.

It was a bitterly cold evening, and I was out with another photographer.  When we weren't eating chips from the local chip shop, or warming ourselves in Burger King over a cup of tea, we were mostly bitching about the cold and taking the piss out of each other.  Good times!

Here's a few of my favourites.  Enjoy.

Edit:  I always forget to include technical details.  All photographs taken with Canon 5d Mark II with 24-105L lens.  Almost everything taken at 6400 ISO, at F4 and shutter speeds ranging between 1/15 to 1/400.