Glow is a yearly event in Eindhoven. It hosts several light art installations. This year Glow was organised again, despite it ending early and being in exam week, I managed to take some nice photos which I will share and analyze with you.

Bouncing balls

The first photo that I want to analyze with you was taken of some bouncing balls of lights. I took a long exposure in order to capture the total movement of the balls.

First I will show you the photo as I have taken it, so this is straight out of the camera.

Composition

For this photo I chose to take it in a portrait orientation, so vertical because I wanted to capture the bouncing balls as well as the fall colored trees and the sky full of stars. The main subject are the bouncing balls which I placed at the bottom in my frame. I filled the rest of my frame with fall colored trees and stars in the sky. I planned on taking out the wire in Photoshop.

Settings

As it was really dark, the most important setting for me was the shutterspeed. Because I knew I would open up my aperture as much as needed and up my ISO a lot, I first experimented with the shutterspeed. Then I adjusted the other two where I preferred to open my aperture more over upping my ISO. I used a tripod to allow for longer shutterspeeds. I wanted those long shutterspeeds because there were moving balls of light and with a long shutterspeed those would become lines.

My final settings were: ISO 800, an aperture of f/2.8 and a shutterspeed of 15 seconds.

Edit

In the edit I focused on enhancing the sky, taking out the wire and making the colors pop. In Lightroom I selected the sky and enhanced the clarity. I also used Lightroom to take out the wire using the spot healing tool and I played with the white balance and colors tab to achieve the look I wanted. Below you can find the before and after.

GEM Tower

The GEM Tower is a project by someone from the faculty at which I am studying. Besides that, it looks really cool and can produce energy. I took a photo of it during glow, when it was lit nicely and you can find the photo as I have taken it below. I have not done anything with it yet, this is straight out of the camera.

Composition

For this photo I chose to take it in a portrait orientation, so vertical because I wanted to use the reflection created in the pond. The main subject is the tower and its reflection which I placed at the center of my frame. I did not really do that in camera, but I did do it in the edit. I used the reflection as a foreground element to make my composition more interesting and let the rest of the frame be filled with the sky.

Settings

For this photo I had the same considerations as for the previous one, for the most part. This photo did not have moving elements, but a reflection in water. For that I experimented a lot with my shutterspeed until I found that long shutterspeeds worked the best to create a nice reflection. I adjusted my aperture and ISO where necessary and that resulted in the following settings: ISO 800, aperture f/14 and a shutterspeed of 25 seconds.

Edit

The first thing that needed my attention in the edit, was the crop. I cropped quite a bit to make the subject stand out a bit more. The second thing was that the photo was really dark, so I lightened it up. As you can see in the edit, quite some noise (grainy looking part in the middle) is visible. This is because of the settings. I did not get enough light in my photo to make it look nice. So next time I should use an aperture that is a bit more opened up, so a lower number. Furthermore, I again played with the colors until I was satisfied and then I was done 🙂