Photo Gallery - Special Effects

Special Effects photography covers a wide range of subjects and treatments. Each of the pictures below can be considered a special effect of one sort or another. Descriptions tell you more.

This might seem a straightforward picture of a train passing through Basingstoke station. In fact, it did take some working at.

I waited for twilight. Since the Casio QV10 has an automatic exposure system, if you want a long exposure, you need dim light. The exposure was the slowest the camera can do (I think) at about a fifteenth of a second. (There's no indication on the camera, so how do I know? - well, look at the reflections of the fluorescent light off the front of the train: there are seven and a bit. Since these lights pulse 100 times per second, that means the exposure included seven hundredths of a second!)

The other thing about this is that it's hand held. How do you avoid blurring at such a slow speed? Well, the QV10 head tilts, so you can use it like a twin-lens-reflex camera - point it forwards, but compose your picture by looking downwards. Thus the direction you are pressing the shutter release is the same as you are looking, which reduces blurring.

This one isn't what it seems. I used the QV10 which has the ability to focus down to 15cm to re-photograph a 6x6cm negative which I had taken with a Lubitel 166 TLR camera in 1985. I then used a piece of image manipulation software to produce a negative of that image, thus effectively making a print. This is the first time I've seen this picture, because I developed the film myself, but my enlarger wouldn't take 6x6 negatives, so I couldn't print it!

(In fact I gave up developing and printing soon after taking this.)

This is another example of forcing the camera to give a slow exposure. On this occasion, the trick was achieved by setting the aperture to f/8 (which is the outdoor setting) even though I was indoors. It's then just a case of waiting for an opportunity to arise. The phone rang. My colleague Mark answered it, and I captured a picture with plenty of (intentional) movement in it.
There's more movement in this one - except of course that there isn't! Although the picture looks a bit like a comet, in fact its just a picture of a light fitting. The light is on, and the automatic exposure system averages out the scene, making everything else black. The green tail is the result of flare within the camera, with light being reflected off the facets of the charge-coupled device array.

It's a bit mysterious, though, don't you think?

Click here to return to the foyer of the Gallery

This page is a part of Chris Tolley's web-site.                                             Latest update: Sunday, June 25, 2000 22:25

Links on my pages can point to other web-sites. If you find that the administrators of those web-sites have made changes which mean you can't access them, please let me know, so I can update or remove the links. As far as I know, none of my links point to sites likely to contain offensive material - but if you discover otherwise, please let me know, as I would like to remove such links from my pages.

Here the Spiritual line joins the Main line  
return to my home page.

Frequently asked Questions
 
send me an e-mail
 ©1996 to 2000: Christopher J. Tolley