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Fire Photography By Hayley Kennedy

Rob Prideaux, San Fransisco, CA.

Rob Prideaux is a photographer known for his series 'Smoke and Fire' along with other unrelated work in photography. He began his journey as a photographer with a disposable camera in 1999, taking pictures of his friends. Rob went on throughout the years to learn more about photography from editorial photographer Thomas Broening, and his interest continued from there. In his series 'Smoke and Fire', Prideaux focuses on how fire can only be controlled to a certain extent, and with this he was able to creatively explore photographing it.

Rob Prideaux was mainly interested in capturing the smoke and fire with a solid white background. He used a wave sensor to capture small gasoline explosions, so he could maintain a crisp image, at the exact time the explosion was occurring.

He then began using stenciled objects to manipulate the fire by creating a specific form.

With very high shutter speeds, Prideaux was able to capture a still, crisp image of the fire and smoke, even with a lot of movement happening.

He would also photographs objects on fire, like trees or clothing. Again, using a very high shutter speed so the individual flames can be seen.

This was the basic set up that Prideaux mainly used. Outside with natural lighting, and a solid background.

Rob Prideaux's take on photographing fire shows us the level of creativity that can be achieved by manipulating an element such as this. As Prideaux says, "it can be difficult to let the creative process go, because you have all these constraints, and it’s difficult to just kind of be unfettered", so this was a way for him to let creativity flow and use his artistic ability without having to think of it as work, as all artists should do from time to time.

Benjamin Von Wong. Born November 14th, 1986 in Toronto Canada.

Benjamin Von Wong set off to tour Europe with Audrey DAS to create the series 'Fine Arts Meets Fire'. Von Wong's main objective was to blend fiery structures around objects in a hyperrealistic, yet surreal way. The process took a lot of planning and pre-production in order to work.

Von Wong used a very high aperture so the light wasn't intense enough to cause any sort of blurring.

He utilizes very fast shutter speeds and low ISO's to show very still, clear flames.

1.6 sec at f / 8.0, ISO 125

1/1000th sec at f /5.0, ISO 100

He also used slower shutter speeds to show the movement of the flame, 2.4 sec at f / 18.0, ISO 100

17.0 sec at f /6.0, ISO 50

The process of his images being taken

While Von Wong's style doesn't relate to my own, his techniques are great to learn from. "I had decided that I wanted to take amazing shots straight out of the camera, without photoshop. It is too easy these days to snigger at a photo and say: “well its just photoshop” so we really wanted to push the boundaries on what was possible to create in camera… something that was REAL", says Von Wong. His style and technique is influential in todays world because it's so easy to create exactly what we want by photoshopping, but Von Wong breaks that trend by creating his idea straight from reality.

“Fine Art Meets Fire.” Von Wong Blog, 30 Jan. 2013, blog.vonwong.com/fine-art-meets- fire/.

Harlan, Jen. “Great Balls of (Smoke &) Fire from Rob Prideaux.” Resource, 25 Sept. 2013, resourcemagonline.com/2013/09/great-balls-smoke-fire-rob-prideaux/31182/.

“BLOG.” Rob Prideaux Still-Life & Conceptual Photography, www.robprideaux.com/blog.

“SMOKE & FIRE.” Rob Prideaux Still-Life & Conceptual Photography, www.robprideaux.com/smoke-fire.

Credits:

Created with an image by Pexels - "fire flames heat"

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