Introduction to roundabouts

Yesterday, we were divided into separate groups to get a taste of the different pathways.
I was placed into a group that took a look at photography and moving image, located in the brand-spanking new STEMM building.

In the morning our group was introduced to the lovely Martyn pearson, whom I had been taught by the previous year.
He introduced us to the camera: Shutter speeds, ISO and aperture. (the basics!) Then quickly moved us on to photographing light painting.

Light painting is quite simply - trails of light painted in a dark room, which had been photographed using a long shutter speed.
to do this, the best way i found was to put the camera on a tripod, to compensate for the long shutter speed so your image will come out as steady as possible.
Then manually focus on the point of interest, using Autofocus in a dark room will not work, as your camera will not be able to see anything to focus on.
next, you need to concentrate on your actual camera settings you need your ISO to be set as low as possible, either 100 or 200 as this will reduce noise. if the image is too light/dark you can experiment with this number as long with the aperture and shutter speed.
I like my aperture set to around f8-f11.
Martyn wanted out shutter speed to be set to "bulb" mode (for however long you press the shutter button for, the shutter will be open.) but I preferred to set the shutter to 30 seconds, so I could press the button, run to my partner, and then paint light around him and vice versa.

Once we had our camera set up, it was time to actually start painting with light. We started by using a small torch on the wall, which we found wasn't really bright and striking enough so we changed our source of light to the flash on my mobile phone, which as i expected, was really bright and the light was more pinpointed.

Light painting

The camera's we used were Neil's so he had to take them back at the end of the day, but he (kindly) put the images on a disc for us to retrieve another day. 

After messing about with lightpainting, we were set the task of going into the stairwell and taking some abstract photographs. The main goal in these photo's are for you to look at them and not quite realise what they are straight away.