Every couple of months our design team has a Kaizen day. For those who have never come across this term it translates from Japanese as Continual Improvement. The idea is for us all to share ideas, inspiration and learn in whichever random way we see fit.

I have always been a lover of photography. Other than our own memory it is the next best thing to recording momentus events. Ultimately the freedom that photography offers us now is amazing, especially when aided by some creative software.

Recently I have found myself carrying my camera everywhere with me. There have been so many times I have wished I had it with me. Now it is a permanent resident of my handbag as much as my lip gloss! Getting back to the point in hand, I wanted to learn, for my Kaizen day, how to do light trail photography. A great example of this can be seen in the following YouTube video.

Long shutter speeds are they key. For those photography buffs out there, I am aware that there is much more to it than this, but please remember I only gave myself 2 hours to learn the very basics. I was stunned at the pictures we managed to take, with such little knowledge, but a huge amount of enthusiasm…

Green alligator, purple man

These are just 2 examples. The experience has left me craving for more. It has even got me considering a new camera… this kind of photography is not always possible with some digital cameras. Ideally you need to be able to manually alter the shutter speed, aperture etc yourself.

After a late night of photography it left me wondering, with all the creative software at my fingertips, could I reproduce this look on my Mac? I tried a tutorial I found on the web, which not only left me dazed and confused but totally disappointed. I couldn’t control the way the light was directed. Whether this is due to a poorly written tutorial I don’t know but the most obvious result from all my creative playtime was that nothing is better than the real thing. Creative software can come a close second but for me it just isn’t good enough.