Susie has been getting involved more and more on the committee of a Local Arts Centre. She accepted the commission to do her thing with Christmas lights, even if they were restricted to only being viewed from outside.
She happily asked me to shoot some pictures at night for publicity etc. I blithely agreed and rocked up with the tripod etc. after the sun had a set a couple of nights ago….. I gradually realised that there were some issues…. Some were predictable. Tungsten light turned everything orange, that could be reset without a problem after the event, but the layout of the building meant that I had to shoot the trees in the window from outside and below. This meant that the background for each shot was a series of hideous florescent light fittings…..
Added to that, one of the other members had agreed to come out and unlock the building so he stood looking chilly while I realised that I didn’t have a huge amount of time for the exercise.
Metering was a nightmare. Anyway, I shot pictures of everything I could without too much consideration other than exposure and getting the shots as sharp as possible.
I got the shots and they were not great….. especially tricky were the trees in the window. As predicted they were lost because immediately behind were the strip lights…. I exposed for the baubles on the tree and hoped I could sort things out at home….
Back at the ranch I removed some extraneous odds and sods and sorted the orange glow then set to work painstakingly removing the strip lights from the image….. it took a couple of hours but in the end this…. Before and after… which is an amateurish attempt, but at least Susie’s hard work can been seen now.....
