Welcome to McAleavy.org, my photographic home on the web. Here you’ll find most of what I’ve been up to recently. I have a keen interest in low-light work and lightpainting in particular, but I also dabble in large format photography, infrared and Polaroid transfer work.

Wisp

Wisp

Twist

Twist

Ruined Glow

Ruined Glow

I’m slowly adding articles to the Techniques section, documenting the processes and equipment used to create the images seen here. Subscribe to the RSS Blog feed if you’d like to receive notification when more articles and images are posted.

Dave McAleavy, May 2007

Demure

Demure

Polaroid 679 transfer on watercolour paper

Latest Photography Blog Post(s):

Hexed

Hexed

Last Saturday I attended a workshop run by Scott Church at The Roost in London. I met a lot of great people and shot some interesting images (shown below).

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Another shoot with the infrared Nikon D100, and the strongest case yet of the blue hair effect. The camera is fitted with an internal infrared filter that isn’t 100% opaque to visible light, so although it’s now primarily a monochrome camera, occasionally a little colour creeps through. Usually it’s subtle, but this time it was a little more vivid.

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Drapery

Drapery

You could say that this was one of those images that nearly didn’t happen. I last worked with Lelly 6 months ago during her pregnancy - you’ll find the image we took then, Mother and Daughter, in the Pregnancy gallery - and I’ve been meaning to shoot her again ever since.

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Unforseen

Unforseen

Frills

Frills

Dee wanted some pictures in her new corset, and asked me to shoot them. So for her first time as a model she not only had to deal with my long-exposure shots and cramp-inducing poses, but had to do so in a corset and heels. Thankfully she survived, and with these results. I think they may have surprised a few people.

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Latest Ramblings Blog Post(s):

Space Navigator

Space Navigator

I added a new gadget to my desktop last week - a Space Navigator. For those with an interest in obscure old gaming controllers, it’s a bit like a desk-mounted SpaceOrb - a little puck that you can push and twist on its base to input movement in 3 dimensions (pan, zoom and rotate).

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DIY Radio Shutter Release

As I’m primarily a lightpainter, I do a lot of work in dark studios, and as a result, trip over things a lot. In an effort to reduce this laughter-inducing behaviour I built a radio shutter release for my camera. My models are now less entertained, but I’m that little bit more efficient, and slightly less bruised. Click the link above for construction details.

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Lightpainting Tutorial

I’ve been meaning to write up a lightpainting tutorial for a while now, but didn’t really think it was worthwhile without some behind-the-scenes example shots - so when I was in the studio shooting this image of Jay last Friday, I took some. Click on the image or the banner above to view.

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