On Location 2: Night Shooting, Urban Setting

I have been wanting to do an experiment for a long time now where I took the last stage of my performance 'The King of Beauty" in which he dresses up as Miss America and take it to a bus stop at night. This required quite a lot of confidence. The first time I tried to do this, I got all dressed up in make up, got the props and camera, drove to the bus stop, saw one person and then I bolted back home.

With more resolve – and at a later time slot – I decided to brave the outdoors.

Firstly, I remembered two things that Dave Mann told me: the flash will freeze the person in the photo and the long exposure time will capture any ambient light. What I hadn't accounted for was:

a) lens flare – even though I had a lens hood, the sheer amount of light in the urban setting from streetlights and cars inevitably causes flare
b) speckling – some of the pictures were destroyed by a speckling effect from the light, which appears on the image as missing pixels and is very hard to repair and
c) the inevitable motion blur – Some of the pictures were ruined by the long exposure time. It was cold and windy, I can imagine I was probably shivering, which has translated onto the image as motion blur

The camera also took a while to process the image after taking the shot, making continuous shooting fairly difficult.

However, it wasn't a total loss:

Miss America In Suburbia 1

As you can see there is a rubbish truck behind me which crawled very slowly along the street as I was taking pictures – I'm sure all the garbage truck men were having a good guffaw as they saw me. There were also two girls who popped out at one point to point and laugh. However, after those two experiences, I thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, so it made it easier to persist and push past that once the initial embarrassment had disappeared.

The most annoying thing about motion blur is that the clarity of the expression was lost:

Miss America In Suburbia 2

As you can see, where the flash 'froze' the model, there is motion blur, but the second one was much clearer. However, something is lost in the clarity. As an aside, an interesting effect I really loved was that at intermittent points, cars would zoom by and here you can see that as a trace of red light due to the long exposure. It really added a sense of life still going by as the photo was being taken.

The best shot of the night also used this ghosting effect:

Miss America In Suburbia 3

A few elements come together in this picture: a couple of cars came by at the same time so you have a brightness from the road. It also uses the 'double contrasting gesture' I experimented with in my very first shoot to provide some kind of juxtaposition, in addition to the ghosting effect I have been testing. I think this 'ghosting + double gesture' could be an interesting way to proceed with this.

I think I also need a more effective way of monitoring how the shots are going 'on-site' as taking photos of yourself, reviewing, running back can be an arduous process. This is easier with tethering in the studio as you can instantly see it on the computer, but I'm wondering if there is a camera with a larger display, for example, that would help me see how the shots are turning out 'as I go'.

On the whole, I'm glad I got this one out of my system. It didn't turn out quite how I wanted it to – I wanted to emphasise the hysteria and isolation of this Miss America figure. Several things could be done to help this. Taking someone out with me might be a massive confidence boost for a start. Also it might be worth considering doing this as a daytime shoot to see the contrast between night and day light, and whether it adds/detracts. Additionally I'm quite satisfied with the capturing of the ambient light as I think the exposure of the pictures was actually very good and well balanced in contrast with the flash.