This Used To Be My Playground serial – Aeroplane playground (2017) + one more

This is another one of many modern newly designed playground equipments which I came across during my research on the internet. In mid-August I came across the Tank playground equipment located in the west region of Singapore, and in late November, I found this one which is located in the north region. It was great fun making photographs of these two. Make the jump to view my new work.

Playground lit under ambient light

The above 2 images were made on 2 separate nights - top one (left side of the equipment) on 2nd December and the other on 20th. I wasn't trying to get the exact same mirror effect angle shot, but more of wanting to try different lighting angles for different results. Well, I could make a few more photographs at various angle but I think these 2 shots are good enough to show it's an aeroplane.

For each photograph, it took me about an hour's time or so, to fire flashlight at flash sync speed of 1/250th second on different parts of the playground equipment. I have had to ensure that I got all the details covered so that it would be a lot easier during post-production in Photoshop with many photos to select from for the best result I wanted. I did explain my Photoshop post-production workflow in my last blog on the Tank playground. Do check out if you have not.

Here's one smaller waterplane playground equipment, not far from the large one. Due to its size, it was a pretty straight forward process as I made a few quick flash pops at 2 or 3 different angles. In Photoshop I stacked up the images, adjusted the lens distortion, made a smaller crop and this is the result. I decided not to cover the other side because of a green colored slide which kind of spoiling the whole waterplane shape, photographically.

Next up, is the Control Tower playground equipment. It's situated right next to the large aeroplane playground equipment and it's more appropriate to compose the shot in portrait orientation. Usually I would make a shot before the actual process started. not just to check for composition but also to show the Before & After effect. So here's the shot under normal ambient light.

There are 2 LED flood lights in the playground vicinity and it goes off at 11:00PM. One of the flood lights is next to the Control Tower. With the lights off and under a full moon night on 2nd December, I switched the WB to Tungsten / Incandescent, to color balance the surrounding sodium vapor street lamps. And of course for the nice blue night sky.

Upon making different flash exposures, especially when I fired the flash right at the back of the tunnel slide, firing in the direction of the camera, for that "glowing" effect, my creativity mind sparked up an idea of having a figure silhouette right inside the tunnel slide. A friend was with me on that full moon night, and when I spoke up about this idea to him, he agreed voluntarily to be that silhouette. I'm really grateful and appreciated for his kind assistance. Thank you bro!

A little tip for you night dwellers – don't go out alone at night. Get your like-minded friends to tag along, and it's always good to collaborate for some fun interesting and creative light-paintings. When the sparks are on, you'd be amazed at the unexpected results you get out of it.

So here's the result from that collaboration with my buddy. Hope this photograph shows more of a creativity in the aspect of sci-fi concept and not too creepy as that of a horror movie. Well, it's pretty subjective in that matter and it's opened for interpretations.