Photography is all about capturing light, so with that in mind, I wanted to see if I could capture the amber glow from a lamp but still see the elegance of the thin glass encompassing it.

Capturing the glow from the lamp

When starting out on a project like this, you need to have a think about the results that you are looking for. In this case, I was looking to capture the glow from the lamp while showing the detail of the lamp itself without any lamp holders to create a suspended in air feel.

Bright flames

Initially I'll be honest, the image I was looking to create was something more like this one, where the glass of the lamp was smashed and the camera captured the filament as it burst into flames. But that's probably a little bit too complicated for this tutorial. So I will get back to explaining how I created the image above, with clean lines and a rich amber glow.

Below you can see some of the images that I captured along the way to explain what I did.

Firstly I decided that I wanted the lamp to be floating in air, so I needed to find a way of powering it without having it sat in a conventional lamp holder. Of course you may decide this next bit is not for the feint hearted (Or unqualified).. Being an electrician in a former life, I decided that I would solder live and neutral wires to the lamp fitting itself, one on the very end contact and one to the side of the screw fitting, this was a bit tricky but I managed to make good connections. Next, I tool those wires to a standard household wall dimmer switch, and then connected from a fused plug, mains electricity to the dimmer switch.

Construction

So now I have a lamp that I can adjust the intensity of using my dimmer switch. The next task was to suspend it in front of a black backing to minimise any unsightly clutter creeping into my image. (You will note if you look very closely that I didn't completely succeed - next time I will choose a less cluttered room for my projects)

For this I was quite fortunate that the cable that I had soldered on was thick enough and strong enough to suspend the lamp from in a position that I wanted, all I needed to do was clamp the cable to the back of the wood I was using to site the lamp for the picture.

My set-up for the shot

The next challenge was in getting just the right settings for my camera to let in just enough light to pick up the amber glow of the filament while not picking up too much of the background or reflection. As you can see from the image below, my first few attempts did end up showing a little too much of the clutter behind me.

As you can see, the set up is a little Heath Robinson but it was effective enough for the results that I was aiming for. and besides, this wasn't intended to win any photography awards, it was merely a weekend project where I was trying out a new idea. So that's my excuses over with, back to the matter in hand.

The flash that you can see above the lamp was to create some illumination in the glass, to highlight the outline of the lamp itself, having the flash pointing towards the lamp from in front was only making the glass either invisible or adding too much reflection.

Finally I thought I would show you how cluttered my work space was and what you need to be conscious of if you attempt to recreate a project like this.

Too much reflection

The flash pointing towards the camera meant that it illuminated everything behind me and that then reflected in the glass of the lamp. Something of a schoolboy error but we live and learn. Any way, the result I think you will see is quite effective and I have learnt more about my photography and about capturing light along the way. In the end, the final image was taken with 1 second exposure at f5.6 and ISO 64 with a rear curtain sync flash.