Welcome to McAleavy.org (or LightPainting.org if you came in that way), my photographic home on the web and sporadically updated blog. I have a keen interest in low-light work and light painting in particular, but I also dabble in large format photography, infrared and Polaroid transfer work.

Wisp

Wisp

Featured in Flashlight

Taken with: Nikon D100

Nikon D100

Image gallery: Nikon D100

Lit with: Maglite

Maglite

Image gallery: Maglite

Twist

Twist

Featured in Flashlight

Taken with: Nikon D100

Nikon D100

Image gallery: Nikon D100

Lit with: Maglite

Maglite

Image gallery: Maglite

Ruined Glow

Ruined Glow

Taken with: Nikon F100

Nikon F100

Image gallery: Nikon F100

Demure

Demure

Polaroid 679 transfer on watercolour paper

Taken with: Shen Hao HZX45-IIA

Shen Hao HZX45-IIA

Image gallery: Shen Hao HZX45-IIA

I’ve recently completed my first book, Flashlight. It’s the culmination of six years of my light painting and long-exposure photography, some of which you will find in the galleries here. I’m immensely proud of both the results and of the huge amount of effort and talent contributed to the project by the models involved. It’s available here: Flashlight.

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Latest Photography Blog Posts:

Volution

Volution

Taken with: Canon 5D

Canon 5D

Image gallery: Canon 5D

Lit with: Docter Aspherilux

Docter Aspherilux

Image gallery: Docter Aspherilux

I shot Kirsty recently using glowsticks and glow-bracelets to create swirls of light. All you have to do is break the glass phial inside them to set them aglow. With the glowsticks that’s quite easy – just snap them – but with the bracelets they’re just too small and so you have to thump the little plastic beads with something and hope they don’t burst open. We got about half of them glowing, which was enough.

Volution

Crux

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Disconnect

Disconnect

Taken with: Canon 5D

Canon 5D

Image gallery: Canon 5D

These shots of Fuchsia were taken with my Lensbaby Composer. I’ve always been a fan of Lensbabies and the Composer makes shooting with one much more controllable. Perhaps a little slower than the 3G for some things, but it stays where you put it and makes fine focus changes much easier.

Disconnect

Vivid

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Revolution

Revolution

Taken with: Canon 5D

Canon 5D

Image gallery: Canon 5D

Lit with: Electroluminescent Wire

Electroluminescent Wire

Image gallery: Electroluminescent Wire

Very occasionally I get the chance to shoot an image that has been rattling around in the dark recesses of my brain for ages. In this case I really wanted to take a long-exposure shot of a pole-dancer spinning round a pole while covered in lights that would leave a trail in the air as she moved. The only problems were that I didn’t know any poledancers and I didn’t have access to a pole.

Read more…

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Electric

Electric

Taken with: Canon 5D

Canon 5D

Image gallery: Canon 5D

Lit with: Electroluminescent Wire

Electroluminescent Wire

Image gallery: Electroluminescent Wire

When I first got hold of some electroluminescent wire I wanted to use it for a guitar shot. It took me a while to get around to it, and when I did I discovered that stringing a guitar with EL wire isn’t really that easy. Who would have guessed. Once it was ready Fuchsia played it for me and Sian did the makeup.

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Latest Ramblings Blog Posts:

After documenting my collection of cameras, I’ve just done the same thing for the lights that I use for my light painting work. They can be found in the Lights Gallery (under Techniques in the main menu) with each image containing a link to a gallery of the images taken with that light.

As with the cameras, each light painted image on the site now has a link to the light that lit it at the bottom.

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Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been photographing my collection of cameras. They’re now in their own gallery and each image here is linked to the camera that took it – click on an image and you’ll find the link at the bottom. There are now also individual galleries for the images taken with the Canon 5D, Nikon D100, Nikon F100, Shen Hao HZX45-IIA and the Holga 120GN.

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Sputnik

Sputnik

On Wednesday my latest eBay purchase finally arrived from the Ukraine – A LOMO Sputnik stereo TLR. It’s basically two Lubitels fused together – a Bakelite monstrosity with all the light leaks, shiny internal surfaces and dodgy engineering familiar to owners of Soviet cameras. At the very least some internal flocking will be required to make it serviceable.

It is, however, enormous fun and shoots stereo images that are considerably less blurry than my stereo Holga, although that, to be honest, isn’t saying very much.

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I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 2.8.4 and Domain Mirror is working without any issues.

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