I have been photographing the 33 Installations that will be on display in the iLight Singapore 2019 - Bicentennial Edition : Bridges of Time.
The best part was that I discovered that the Z 6 mirrorless was more then capable of generating high quality images of the installations hand-held. This gave me so much more flexibility AND the much needed speed to do my photography.
Amongst the 33 installations there are a couple that are super tough to photograph given the installation setup and the installation environment. For a start I am going to share some images on the iLight installations that are located in Raffles Terrace , Fort Canning Park.
This is also to help in broadcasting that iLight is at Fort Canning Park which will definitely NOT be as popular or as easy to access as that around the Bay & Clark Quay
Land-pass Bird
Installation #30
Raffles Terrace @Fort Canning Park
Showcases mythical birds perched on the trees of Raffles Terrace
Artist
Huang Chin-Fu (Taiwan)
Challenges
The challenge really was to photograph the "Birds" at the right exposure and yet have sufficient shadow / mid-tone details to be able to show the environment successfully.
Technique used:
Hand-Held 2 shot bracketing at 12fps
2nd shot was brighter by 3 stops over starting exposure
ISO500 , f4.0 , 1/200s (exposure for the birds)
Blending in post & overall enhancement time < 5 minutes
Keys of Light
Installation #31
Raffles Terrace @Fort Canning Park
Keys of Light is a modular interactive piano installation that encourages participation by playing the piano. A musical algorithm reveals graphic compositions on the Lighthouse at Raffles Terrace. The surrounding lighting effects were also controlled by the algorithm as the piano is played.
Artist
Mr. Beam (Netherlands)
Challenges
Other than the dynamic range of the scene which was less of a problem then the Land-pass Bird installation , the main challenge was how to include the piano playing into the composition together with the lighthouse.
Reflecting Holons
Installation #32
Raffles Terrace @Fort Canning Park
This installation showcases the ephemeral magic of light and movement.Long strips of oil-like transparent foils combined with a micro-controller become a visual entity of reflecting lights around them as if they were water droplets. This is an indoor installation
Artist
Michiel Martens & Jetske Visser (Netherlands)
Challenges
Composition would be the main challenge here - how to showcase the light reflections and the different changing shapes of the gigantic "water droplets"
Hope you enjoyed the images of the iLight installations at Fort Canning. I only had 40 minutes to capture ALL the shots I needed including those of the artists in a SINGLE session. So imagine if I was using a tripod and setting up , it would just not be possible !
In summary , the Z 6 with the Nikkor Z 24-70mm f/4S is an awesome combo for photographing events like this.
The combo was light , responsive , capable of autofocusing in low light and had great dynamic range performance.
The EVF and Live Preview was a blessing , in getting the right exposure first time
The IBIS (In-Build Image Stabilisation) was just awesome.
Hope everyone that reads this , make the climb up to Raffles Terrace (extremely good exercise) and interact with the installations.
More interesting blogs on iLight 2019 to come. iLights goes on from 28th Jan to 24th Feb. 2019 from 7:30pm.
Till then
cheers Andrew