Digital Imaging - Fire

I have been rather busy during my two weeks off, but we have been set a few digital imaging techniques for when we return back to University next week. One technique we have been set is to photograph fire. After focusing on fire for one of my previous projects last year and really loving my final image, I thought I would use this as one of my images for this task. I spent a lot of time and effort in getting the right image last year. I was in the studio and it took me atleast 50-60 images before I got the right one that really expressed fire in the way that I wanted it to be conveyed.

I used a model the accompany the fire itself to add something different to the whole concept. I wanted the fire to be the main part of the image, but at the same time, I wanted the model to be in the background to allow for people to understand the dangers of fire, how it causes a phobia and almost the dark and dreary side of fire and what it can cause, rather than the beauty of it. I am so pleased with how my final image came out. The image below was my final image (which took a lot of patience to capture!). I wanted the end of the flame to be in line with the models eyes and for it to be gradually moving out of the image, towards the viewer. I did this by opening the shutter speed up slightly for a few seconds, and when I pressed the shutter, id slowly turn the lens from its smallest aperture to the widest the lens could go. With just a slow turn of the lens, I was able to capture and image like this one, which was really what I wanted my image to look like, spooky and dream like against the pitch black background, yet technical and interesting to look at.

 

 

 

Below are some images I took recently to go with overall task to round off the task as a whole.

 

 

 

I would definitely love to do something like this again. I chose fire because it was something that I probably wouldn't think about photographing, and it really took me out of my comfort zone as a photographer. I really enjoyed using a model within my images as it added something extra to the whole task and concept. I believe it makes the image look a lot more effective, especially as the image is quite spontaneous to where the light, flames and models face ends up in the final image. I didn't know how the image was going to turn out so it was definitely a trial and error type of shoot but I couldn't be happier with the outcomes :)