Wheel Within a Wheel

Light Painting

I am fascinated with the images that I can obtain on a digital "negative" via my version of "light painting". There are two methods for doing this at the moment of exposure, the first involves shining lights onto the scene and the other moving the camera itself. I practice the latter, so I set myself up late at night at the foot of the Champs Elysées, intent on morphing the scene in front of me into an abstract.

Preceding The Vision

See below the scene in real life. Given its enormous size, this temporary Ferris Wheel is difficult to view straight on, without including the clutter of street furniture and the gorgeous obelisk in the centre of the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

The Original ViewCopyrighted Digital Photograph

Called "La Grande Roue" it operates during the Christmas and New Year holiday season on Concorde. It's lighting scheme is pure fairground style and I personally would prefer for it not be positioned on one of the most elegant boulevards in the world, holiday season or no holiday season. My opinion is not shared by the millions who enjoy seeing the Champs Elysées lit for the festivals. Like many such structures - the London Eye and the Tour Montparnasse in Paris also come to mind - it is far better to be looking outwards (the views from them are amazing), than to be outside looking directly at them. 

I am clearly prejudiced, since I do not feel the same about others, such as the Empire State building, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. I claim a right to my individual artistic taste!

Timing is Everything

Here is how I found a way to use the image, without showing it for what it is, or including the clutter of urban street furniture surrounding it. A high-tech lighting scheme creates constantly moving, dazzling patterns from lights on the circular rim and the supporting struts. I spent the first half hour studying the ebb and flow of its lighting scheme on a freezing cold february night. Once I had learned its pattern, I spent more time experimenting with timing various, hand-held, free movements of the camera, so as to coincide with the lighting at its apogee. From experience, the smoothness of the gesture is key to a pleasing result, keeping enough of the underlying subject visible enough, so as to suggest its origins. For that reason, the wheel shape was repeated four times in the image, creating movement and complex interwoven patterns which bring it alive, for me. 

Settings

I set the camera to "Shutter Priority" so as to shoot a "long" exposure and capture light during the whole of a flowing movement of my wrist. This also enabled the luxury of using a high-quality ISO due to two reasons: light would be collected over a long period and my abstract concept meant that I only needed to capture the dazzle of the light show, not real-life detail. 

Intellectually, 1.6 seconds seems too short to capture a movement involving a sweeping arm motion while turning my wrist. Subjectively, my actions seemed to last much longer. It is surprising just how much can be crammed into nearly 2 seconds! 

Camera: Nikon D800

Lens: 60mm prime f2,8G

Focal Length: 60mm

Focus Mode: AF-C

Aperture: f/8

Shutter Speed: 1.6s

Exposure Mode: Shutter Priority

Metering: Matrix

ISO Sensitivity: 160

Post Processing

In post processing I chose to use a false white balance, which provided a more varied color scheme than true colour. I would normally strive for the most representative colour reproduction possible, but working in abstract legitimizes any manipulation in my book. 

Portfolio

Why not try this yourself? See other examples of this technique in my Abstract gallery: Portfolio/ Limited Editions.