
Blue hour & improvised Lightpainting at the Louvres
…I wanted to take a quick shot at the facade lightings of the Louvre which are quite excellent at night and pretty unreal looking. So we picked up our cams and went over there at sunset, trying to catch the blue light before night.
The clouds were with us at that time as it is always nice to have a loaded & moving sky for such pics rather than a plain, empty dark background. We actually went from a few shots inside out to catch the last rays of sun which resulted in quite nice images. Looked pretty touristic but what do you want ? You’re at the Louvre, it’s hard not to end up getting caught by the scenery and taking pics like the japanese guy standing next to you. Paris is not a sleepy village of Somerset but among the top 5 cities in the world to see and live in. Of course, if your dream is to be a shepherd, this argument will not prevail 😉
So the sunset pics showed the nice cool blue light as you might see here :
From there we wanted to settle over into the rear courtyard of the Louvre but to our big surprise there were no lighting there. First quite annoyed by this potentiel flop in our tour there, I swinged the whole thing around and started shooting pics in the dark. Then it came to my mind that my iPhone could actually be used as a lighting device. That said, we went over into a completely improvised Light Painting session that revealed really great fun to do. We forgot about time and shot several pics with nice effects as you might see here.
Indeed, it’s when you have less options that you get creative 🙂 Evi served patiently as a model and did great. I tried also a first timer, assembling 3 images into one, picturing the same person 3 times in one shot. Easy with Photoshop when you work well the subject’s position during the shooting. Anyway, it was great fun doing this and we definitely have to get back there as we have to improve the technique while working in such an original spot (the background with the clouds is terrific).
Happy Light Painting !