Photographic Experimentation

For a few weeks I had been noticing how the neighbours light affected our bare lilac bush in the dark, just lighting it a little bit.

It gave me an idea for a photo experiment, but I had to wait for a night that wasn't too cold or windy. It was particularly important that it not be windy as I would likely be doing long exposures in the dark, and I didn't need branches moving, although now that I think on it, that might have added another dimension.

The howling winds were finally quiet one night on Easter weekend. Although it was still quite chilly, I wanted to do my experiment before the lilac bush leafed out, so out I went. Thinking about it now, the lower part of the bush that I used in the photo will likely not leaf out anyway.

While that photo ↑ is alright, it is not the vision but just the beginning of it.

My next step was to insert myself into the same scene without moving the camera which was on a tripod. I set the timer on a 10 second delay to give myself time to insert myself into the frame.

I was going a creepy look, and while I think I succeeded, that was still not the final image that I had in mind. As it turns out, I like it ↑ better than the final image ↓ which is coming up next, but let's keep the story going anyway, shall we?

The concept was to layer the above two photos into a new composite so that I could fade the one with me in an attempt to make it look a little ghostlike. I hadn't intended to add the red eyes, but I did so at the last minute. I guess it makes it look more demonic than ghostlike.

Of course, they are dark and creepy, especially the composite, but that was the intent, and as usual, they look somewhat better on the larger and uncompressed version on my computer. As you know, if you click on the image, you will see it somewhat larger although still not in full resolution. I do not upload high res images to my blogs.

It was a fun experiment, both in camera and in the digital darkroom (aka Photoshop). It was still quite nippy that night, so I didn't want to linger outside for too very long, but before returning to the house, I did do another little series. I will likely post that set soon, maybe tomorrow.