We have a bit of a situation on our hands! At no surprise to anyone, events throughout the month of March, April, May and probably beyond are being postponed (or worse, cancelled)….which sucks.
Something I had previously talked about was staying up to form and shaking off your rust, and how important it is to keep your brain in tip top shape as a photographer. With events cancelled, weddings postponed due to the coronavirus, the only thing left for me to do is take photos where I can! Pushing my creativity forward by restricting myself to 1 lens, and exclusively using in-camera effects, and only using Lightroom for color grading. Sony cameras don’t have the option to create in-camera double exposures so I had to bust out the old Nikon for this. It’s a slight departure from my usual content, but i think it’s kinda fun. Some double exposures, some shutter drag and some quadruple exposures too. Lots of fun stuff.
Gear used:
Nikon D810
50mm f/1.8
This first set was taken late in the day, around dusk. All 4 were taken at one scene, only needing to take a few steps here and there. The first image is actually two different double exposures stacked onto each other! The other few are normal double/triple exposures.
This next set was taken around noon on a cloudy day in the middle of some trees on a trail. Not quite as restricted on space but I tried to color grade it differently while still sticking to only in-camera effects.
These days my primary color grading style prioritizes natural colors (with a smidge of red/yellow/green adjustment) but I tried going back and remastering an older preset I had made! Rich earthy tones with green undertones. Should I sell presets? Maybe I’ll do that, eh
This final set was taken the day before the Shelter at Home order was issued in the state of MD. One final day of the sweet outdoors, I guess.
Instead of being taken during the day, I wanted to take advantage of the wonderful fog that was left over from a day of rain. In true esports fashion, light was scarce, and shooting conditions were far from ideal. But we made it work!
Now the kicker is, these were all created basically on the same street, and all the effects you see are also created IN-CAMERA! The only things I did before posting these was adjusting the color grade of the images + crop but no additional Photoshop was used!
It’s a fairly long stretch of road but all of this can be created just by going out at different times of day! I’ll throw up photos of the spots I shot things from in a little carousel below.
The very first set was entirely shot from that first image, within a few steps! The second set was shot from the second image, also with only a few steps here and there. And the last set had a bit more travel, with me going up and down an empty road that branches off from the main road.
All this to say: you don’t need a beautiful vineyard to make cool art. You just gotta flex those creativity muscles a bit, y’know?
What kind of stuff are you making? Let me know over on instagram at @wzhouphoto!
Hungry for more delicious art? Check out my recent collaboration with illustrator/designer extraordinaire Kathi Ha over in my first COLLABORATIONS blog post!
