Continuing my series of favourite lightpainting locations, this time it's the turn of "Woodhead Tunnel".
That's not it's real name and is referred to by @fadetoblack and I as Woodhead because that's roughly where it is in Derbyshire. We decided early on to keep the location secret and exclusive to us. When you discover something good it's not always good to share!
Tim and his local knowledge found the location, a personnel tunnel under a disused railway tunnel running through Derbyshire. My only issue with the tunnel is that it is slippy as hell and I've fallen quite badly in here once or twice. I've tripped up like a sack of potatoes and injured my shoulder, crippling me for months!
Risk of injury aside, this is a post of favourites shot in the tunnel and despite the risk, I wouldn't hesitate to go back and shoot some more!
Rotating Fire
The great thing about stone built tunnels is there is very little risk of setting it on fire! We can experiment to our heart's content with all manner of pyrotechnics!
To make this image, I asked my LP buddy of choice, @fadetoblack to spin some steel wool on a drill to the side of the camera. The position of the spin was intended to leave a dark, unexposed space within which to add more light. Once we'd nailed the spin, Tim took up position in the middle of the frame and struck his best Yeti pose.
This shot was also stolen a few years ago by some horrible c*** who tried to pass it off as his own work. I got it back and the thief got his just reward with a permanent ban!
Ordered Chaos
This is an example of a shot where experiments lead to something unexpected or greater as a result of collaborating with another lightpainter, in this case @fadetoblack
First I shot Tim in silhouette. With the camera still running I panned the camera slightly and manually wound the camera around the lens axis using my home made camera rotation tool. We couldn't get the wool to burn for long enough for a 360 degree turn so we split it in to two burns which seems to have worked.
We are due at some point to repeat this with four burns but life, COVID, dodgy knees and time have all conspired against us!
The Woodhead Collider
Rotating lasers in the tunnel. At the time I shot this, the Hadron Collider was in the news and people were being assured in the media that the mad scientists weren't going to blow us all up in to the next dimension!
I didn't get blown up but I did manage to make it out alive without slipping on the mossy stone unlike the time before this....
Standing on the ceiling
@fadetoblack testing out his new super sticky prototype antigrav boots.
Held together by bands of steel
At the other end of the tunnel are several support braces presumably holding up the roof. We appeared to have spent a lot of time shooting the other end so here we decided to shoot the opposite way around.
I set the white balance on my camera to 3500K and used my favourite fluorescent blue perspex sheet over a light source. There's probably too much smoke in this shot and I should have waited 30 seconds more before shooting to let the haze clear.
The Also Ran
One of the good things about light painting experimentation is you can recycle the shit shots in to something half presentable. Here I cropped in....
The Light at the End
Sometimes in life, simple is best. All I did here was to use a single light behind Tim and fire away. So simple but when I posted this originally on Flickr it gained 112K views! I'm always amazed the simpler to make stuff I do is more popular! It seems the more effort and complexity I put in to a photo, the less popular it becomes. Bugger.
The Obligatory Behind the Scenes Shot
Sometimes I find myself stood in a tunnel in the dark and the scene looks epic! I simply have to stop what I'm doing and pull out a camera phone!
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.
Social Media
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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.
If you would like to see more lightpainting please give the Lightpainters United Community a follow and you will be introduced into the illuminating world of light painting!
If you want to see more examples of lightpainting, feel free to check out these guys:
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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