Butterfly Pavilion: Living Lights

You know I'm serious about photography when I miss a Broncos playoff game to attend a workshop. Mike's Camera held a class on exposure values and light painting Sunday night, which I honestly signed up for well before the NFL postseason schedule was set. And admittedly, I did check my SportsCenter app more and more frequently as the night went on.

Fortunately, both the game and the workshop went the way I'd hoped. :)

The light sculptures were the focus, but I was initially captivated by one of the heaters.  As the night continued and my hands grew colder, I was captivated by the heaters for other reasons.

The winds were gusty, which had to be dealt with when shooting with long exposures.  And it's a fine line between being an artistically blurry picture and a just plain bad one.  I liked how this particular shot turned out -- kind of like a neon x-ray.

I'm typically a slave to the rule of thirds, unless I'm dealing with a scene that has symmetry.  Then I want things dead center.

A patch of grass lit up with red light resembled a firework.

The city lights in the background turned me off from shooting many wide scenes.  But I thought this view was all right.

Sucker for running water that I am, I spent a lot of time around a water feature that runs through the gardens.  This one made me think of a home aquarium.

Some lights on the ground were interesting, but didn't come out quite as sharp as I wanted.  Which is odd, because the wind wasn't blowing them around.  I suppose the wind could have been making my camera with its zoom lens shake a bit.

The zoom didn't shake on this scene, though.  Nice and crisp.

The light painting we discussed in the lecture portion wasn't the kind I was thinking of, where you shine a flashlight around.  Instead we were experimenting with zooming in and out with the aperture open.  Out of my comfort zone, but pretty fun.

I ended up being one of the last ones there, merrily zooming in and out on different displays.  Frozen fingers were a small price to pay for the chance to learn some new tricks!