Last night, I did a really fun photo shoot with my UFO Lamp. It was packed away in a box ready to be thrown out since I have nowhere to put it and, to be honest, the novelty had worn off. Then it dawned on me! This would make a perfect subject for abstract long exposure shots.

I shot most of them in “shutter priority mode” which can give up to 3 seconds exposure time. My camera also has “night mode” which goes up to 15 seconds but has no macro feature (why, I don’t know). And I *definitely* needed macro for this, or it would have been a big blur-fest. Somewhere between 1-2 seconds exposure seemed to give the best results. Any higher and too much light is taken in you start to get clipping (which I hate). I also shot most of them on -1.3 or -1 step exposure compensation.

I’m surprised by depth apparent in some of these shots. I theorise it’s created by having a fixed focal length then rapidly moving the camera away from or towards the subject. The result is an illusory depth of field which looks kinda cool.

Most haven’t been edited at all, and the ones I did edit was just to tweak the brightness/contrast. Check out the full set of 29 photos that made the final cut from the 220 or so I took ;-) Haven’t finished naming them all yet but suggestions are welcome!