Dabbling In Bulb Photography

Bulb photography is something that has always had me a little bit amazed. For anyone that doesn't know, it's when you fiddle with the shutter speed (making it say 30seconds long) and using a torch to draw shapes in the air. It's something I've always wanted to try but it's not often you find yourself in a field at night. So this summer when I was camping with a couple of friends I found myself rigging up a tripod and fiddling with the camera settings for a little taster session.

We did lots of 'taster shots' at the beginning aka an excuse to go crazy and make zigzag shapes all over the place. Then with the right settings and camera position in place we could get a little bit more creative. 

The idea in this shot above was to create three silhouettes all layered on top of each other, to make it look like someone was stepping upwards. I think we were a little ambitious but it kinda worked!

In the next three photos we tried to write '2015' in the air, sounds simple but then it dawned on us that 'oh wait, we have to write these numbers backwards'. It took a few shots, the suspense when you're waiting for the photo to load was intense, sometimes we really couldn't tell whether we were drawing the number the right way round! 

 None of these photos are perfect, and being a slight perfectionist I'd love to spend a few solid hours getting some shots just right. But it was so much fun, we ended up having one person hold down the 'photo taking' button so we didn't have a set time to draw - because 30seconds just wasn't long enough! The whole rushing to the camera to check how the photo turned out was super fun and meant a lot of gallivanting across the field!
If I ever happen to be somewhere dark and spacious again with tripod and camera in hand ( you never know ) I think shoot two will have to happen. 
Georgina