Perth at Night - The Haunted House

On Friday night, a group of us went out to take some night photos at an abandoned house north of Perth.



There are a couple of stories about this place that suggest it may be haunted, but we didn't see any evidence of that this night. It is however, fairly well run down and there's a fairly constant stream of visitors, some just wanting to look around, some wanting to skate in the empty swimming pool and some come to paint on the walls. Of course, there are some who come to drink, take drugs or trash the place, but we didn't encounter any of those while we were there.

There is literally no ambient light here at night, except for the moonlight. that means that all of these shots were taken with longer exposures, with the camera mounted on a tripod. They also all used off camera flash for additional lighting, varying from a couple of low powered pops for the close up work to running around firing flashes from a number of different angles trying to illuminate every nook and cranny (and even then, still missing some).



We're already planning more visits to this location, as the constantly evolving nature of the artwork is going to ensure that there will be new, interesting things to photograph for a long time to come.

You can check out the full set of photos from the night shoot at the Haunted House in the galleries over at LandBarge.com.

Sculpture By The Sea - Cottesloe Beach

'Sculpture By The Sea' is a public art exhibition that visits Perth's Cottesloe Beach every summer. There are also 'Sculpture By The Sea' exhibits in Bondi in New South Wales, and Aarhus in Denmark.



This piece was constructed entirely out of plastic bottle caps contained in an onion-bag type of mesh.



Over 60 sculptures have been installed on the beach and on the grassy banks overlooking the ocean at Cottesloe Beach, from artists not only from Australia, but from around the world.



Last night, myself, my girlfriend Kate and a number of other Perth photographers and car nuts descended on Cottesloe Beach to check out this years exhibit. As we also all enjoy the challenge of night photography, we hit the beach around sunset and kept shooting until just after 10pm, before heading down to Capt'n Munchies in Fremantle for a bite to eat.



Sculpture By The Sea continues at Cottesloe Beach until the 23rd of March, and is well worth a visit.

Perth at Night - Barrack Street

Tonight, k8 and I went out for a late night photo mission with John from biante12.com and Dave and Nat from pixelculture.com



Our original intentions were to head up to Hillary's Boat Harbour, in the Northern Suburbs of Perth, however, somewhere along the way we decided to drop in to Barrack Street to see what lighting was turned on for the Bell Tower and the Perth Wheel tonight.



As it turned out, the Perth Wheel was in full operation, and the Bell Tower had most of it's lighting turned on for the night. Consequently, we spent a good couple of hours here taking photos from a bunch of different angles and playing around with long exposures, trying to make the best of a rather strange lighting situation. The intense lighting on the main structures makes it hard to pick up much detail at all in the surrounding parts of the shot, but it can be done.



I also decided to try a little freehand long exposure work, in part because I lent my tripod and remote trigger to k8 so that she could get some practise with those. I was quite happy with the way some of these shots turned out, mind you, I guess I did only work with the safer options here, using fence posts as supports, and shooting targets that had some incident light falling on them, but then, isn't that what it's all about?



After a few hours running round taking various photos, we decided to head off to Exomod Coffee in Mt Lawley, before heading home to check out our photos. Exomod is one of the few places in Perth where you can still get service after about 8pm, as they are open till 12 most days, and run 24 hours on Friday and Saturday.