Red Shoe Diaries (sort of)...

Back in January I photographed the Shoe Queen of Berkshire, Catherine, with her red shoes. In the background hanging on the wall is a canvas picture of the same red shoes with what looks like lightning strikes all around, you can see it here. Well, this is how I took that picture.

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First catch yourself a pair of ridiculously high heeled shoes. Red, but any colour will do. I laid them out on a piece of black paper. I tried various arrangements until I came on the one that I thought was most pleasing.

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I took the shot with the camera on a tripod and used the pop up flash to illuminate it. I just wanted to make sure the arrangement was the right one. This shot is, in itself, nothing to write home about; dull, lifeless; its just a pair of shoes. But to women, no shoes are 'just shoes'. You'll have to ask them about that yourself.

So we have to make it a bit special. A bit magical. I set the camera to manual and dialled in a 20 second exposure at f8. It was a guess, but it proved to be spot on. I then took a Maglite torch, took off the reflector head and with the bare bulb got ready to start 'light painting'.
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D200, tripod, Tamron 17 - 50 f2.8, 20 secs at f8, Maglite torch

From then on its all a matter of timing. Oh, and I forgot to say all this is done in the dark, room lights off and hope no one decides to come into the room! Then trip the shutter on self timer, wait for the click and start painting. I must have done about twenty shots before I was happy, and then I chose the first one! And remember its twenty shots at twenty seconds with fiddling around with the self timer and torch and possibly the arrangement, so we are talking half an hour and most of it in the dark with just a pair of sexy red shoes...