UV Light Photography - The Dark Side Of Photography

A while ago I saw a shot of 3 ghost like people looking straight up at the camera and I just thought wow how was this shot done, not only was the point of view and faces really  eerie it was the way it was lit that really grabbed my attention.
The picture was taken by the very talented photographer Benjamin Von Wong, I didn't want to copy and paste his picture due to copyright so instead I will link Benjamin's blog page below
http://blog.vonwong.com/uv/
The picture that grabbed me was not on the blog page itself but in Benjamin's video on the page so make sure you check it out.
So what was the magical mastery that created this amazing light well it was UV light.
Now this was something I had to try.
But after going to the back of my mind and 2 years later my own UV light was sparked again after coming across UV paints on Amazon whilst looking for home craft stuff for my homeschooled daughter.
I ordered a set of the UV neon paints, a UV bulb and a bulb holder with a clamp, now I only had to wait for darkness to arrive to recreate what I had seen 2 years previous.
Well when I say recreate I mean experiment and see what happened lol.
Benjamin Von Wong had professional models, professional make up artists, an army of assistants and professional specialist lights provided by Broncolor, in comparison my little light bulb and £10 paints was an uphill struggle to get any promising results at all.
Still photography is all about experimentation and fun so with the help of my very understanding wife/assistant we ploughed ahead to see what results we could get.

Here is a short and fun video of us putting our UV photography shot together




My video was filmed on my Nikon D750 with Tamron 24-70 so I used my NIkon D7100 with Nikon 85mm f/1.8 to take some stills at the same time of filming, My Nikon D7100 was directly below my Nikon D750.
Because I was lit with only the light from the UV bulb, all other lights where turned off and it was night time I had to play around with my camera settings to get a fast enough shutter speed.
This is also the reason I used a lens with a fast aperture.

My Settings where
ISO 1600 - f/2.2 - 1/30 sec

My camera was on a tripod so I just had to hold as still as possible for the stills shots.
In the video will see a few of the still shots as well.

So overall it was fun with some very cool results and all for around £20 which shows you don't have to be Benjamin Von Wong with a big budget, its all about giving it a go ,get inspired and go and try.
There is a link on the video page in YouTube to the items I used as well just in case you want to give it a go.
Just make sure you don't stare at the Bulb as it may cause damage to your eyes.


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