Photographing this year’s Welshampton bonfire with the lighting problems we had was interesting to say the least and a few people have asked me about this so I thought I’d cover it here. I didn’t get a proper chance this year to do much in the way of test shots as unfortunately there was an issue with the lighting desk during the Tech’ rehearsal on the Friday evening before the event. Not the end of the world I though as after photographing this event for the previous seven years I thought I’ve more or less got the hang of most the problems it can give you.
I was wrong. Around fifteen minutes before the performance was due to start on the Saturday evening the light failed, again. I’m sure everyone involved had their own issues caused by this but my thoughts definitely went along the lines of ‘bugger, how am I going to do this then’!?
In previous years the issue has always been getting the exposures right with the lights changing in colour and intensity constantly throughout the show, this time I was going to have to try and do a good deal of lighting from the camera. So with the event now being lit by little more that a couple of ambient background lights illuminating the bonfire build and a follow spot which I had no control of I find myself feeling very happy in the knowledge that my trusty Nikon SB600 strobe had a fresh set of batteries in it! Once attached to the camera, and we were off!
After a few shots it became clear that using the strobe at any high power as needed was spilling too much light around the surrounding area’s and so I tried using the grid I had with me to limit the light spillage and ‘spotlight’ the area’s I wanted to. This worked really well and so I used it throughout the rest of the performance. What made me even happier is this is the classic ‘made with black tape and black straws’ home-made kind of grid so following the commonly held view by many strobist photographers that when it comes to strobe lighting high cost equipment is often unrequited.
After an interesting evening of constant ongoing image reviewing followed by constant ongoing sodding around with strobe power settings to add to the usual photography fun it all seemed to go ok in the end.
To those of us that are involved and know how it could have looked the lights failing was a real blow as the drama, colour and effect was lost but I hope for most of the audience that wouldn’t have know about any of this that they enjoyed it without knowing something was missing.
So with the decision that the Welshampton bonfires are now over and there will be no more we move onto other events and other things. The Panto in February and a new type of event for us all together in the summer! Looking forward to it all.
So finally, here’s a selection of images that made lighting this years, final bonfire, so interesting… 
This seems a shame that it is a little colourless but at least it is a cake and so is fine being white.
This one is a mixture of the ambient light of the backlit windows and some low power strobe light illuminate the build itself.
And then going for some without the strobe to get a contrasty skeletal look
A longer exposure of 3 seconds for a bit of sky and foreground
This is a combination of two shots, one exposed for the volcano and one with the gridded strobe to pick out Sir Mike in his boat
The Goddess lit with low power strobe to pick out the metal work
And then without the strobe to pick out the flames
Again, this does seem lacking in colour but I’m sure the audience still enjoyed it anyway
Ahhhhh, that’s a bit more colour! Three second exposure to try to get some dramatic fireworks
I always like this bit, the start of the burn…
And the burn just gets gets better!
…and Hotter!
