Sunday, May 23, 2010

May 23, 2010, Hand Dug Well

We live in an old farm house, and it has a hand dug well.  There is a cover on the well with a little hole that supported a hand pump.

This month's theme for the photo club is "depth".  I decided to take photos of the old well. 

What a project it turned out to be.  The well is about 30 feet deep.  The lighting was very tricky.  

Lessons Learned:
    • At first I tried an incandescent bulb on a trouble light.  I lowered the light down near the water.  The photo didn't work very well.  It was light near the top of the well, and light near the bottom of the well.  It was difficult to see the rocks.  I then covered the top of my camera to reduce the sun light.  This helped, but was still two dark near the top of the well.
    • I next tried Christmas Tree lights to try and give lighting throughout the well.  This failed as well.
    • Finally I pulled out a halogen Flood light and put it in the top of the well shining down the well.  I had to offset the light so that the camera could have an unobstructed view of the well.  I used a clamp and a 2x4 to clamp the light off to the right of the photo. 
Photo details: Exposure time 20 sec, Aperture f/13.0, ISO 100, Focal Length 17 mm, Lens Canon EF 17-40mm, handheld.

8 comments:

dianasfaria.com said...

I wonder how long it took them to dig that well!
A great shot that was well worth the effort too.

toledonative said...

Cool well and cool shot! It fits the theme perfectly! I wonder if it would be possible to lower the camera (on a platform rigged to a pulley maybe?) and shoot UP from the bottom of the well?

Unknown said...

Oooo... that's way cool, and kinda creepy.. but only because I'm not into confined spaces. ;)

AB said...

Glad you got the lighting sorted out, the resulting shot is great

Reverend Awesome said...

Wow. This is really cool.
You put christmas lights down the well!? You put a lot of work into getting this and it was well worth it.

Yolanda said...

Love the circular shape, the textures of the stones, it all adds to the depth perspective of this shot - very cool!

Jacob Ellis Hart said...

Where is this?

Gallow said...

It is next to my house in Groton NY