It's not often you find a location which is dark enough in daylight to practice the dark art of lightpainting where complete darkness is necessary. But today @neilru75 and I made the effort to visit this abandoned WW2 air raid shelter to check it out.
I'd seen a YouTuber visit this place and whilst he wasn't exactly giving the location away as is the usual with the unofficial urbexer's code but it wasn't difficult to figure it out for myself. Once I worked out the route in on Google maps, it was real easy.
We parked up and walked approx. 500 yards from the car with unusually no hills to climb! The best lightpainting locations always seem to involve some arduous climb or dangerous walk over slippy rocks! This time we got lucky.
Daylight Lightpainting Pan and Tilt
The main air raid shelter is about 60 mtrs long split in to a rectangular zig zag arrangement with sections each about 6 mtrs in length. I presume this zig zag arrangement was intended to protect the occupants from being hit by a blast if one part of the shelter was hit from the skies.
For this shot, I used my "pan and tilt" method. Tilt the camera and fire a flash to light up the background. Then ask the subject to turn on a flashing torch and I simultaneously pan the camera leaving a trail of light in the frame.
I wished I'd taken a fisheye lens for this one but hey ho....
One of those, which one do I prefer moments, so I've posted both so you can decide!
Urbex with a camera phone
Before we started lightpainting, we had a little explore around the air raid shelter. This is lit by my head torch:
Real easy to get in....
Shooting through holes in the roof....
This is the hole.... I can use this on a future lightpainting session here.
Zig Zag
I didn't get many lightpainting shots on our visit but this just about passed muster:
I shall be return here for sure!!
About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in urbex and artistic model photography. I'm always on the lookout for someone to collaborate with; please don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to create art.
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Lightpainting is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source while taking a long exposure photograph, either to illuminate a subject or to shine a point of light directly at the camera, or by moving the camera itself during exposure. Nothing is added or removed in post processing.
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Mafu Fuma | Oddballgraphics | FadetoBlack | DAWN | Mart Barras | Stefan Stepke | Nikolay Trebukhin | Lee Todd | Stabeu Light | Maxime Pateau | Stephen Sampson | lightandlense | Neil Rushby | L.A.C.E.
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Great stuff guys! Have to get out more 😎
Thanks mate, I end up with jet lag at this time of year if I stay out late.... Roll on darker nights!
Great Post mate, and definitely a location for a future visit 👍