Lightpainting the trophy collection

Every once and a while I get bored and decide to bust out the camera and try something new to kill some time. Or, in this case, at least to try and refine something I haven't tried in a long time. So, what started off as a bit of a document of my trophy collection turned into a little quest to make a line up of trophies on an ugly carpet floor in my room interesting. Editing the first shot, with it's diffused even lighting and HDR effect, wasn't enough to make it interesting.

The first shot, edited. Pretty boring, but it does cover everything, so it has accomplished it's task of documentation, although, actually, I forgot a couple trophies in garage.

A little while later when I was thinking about the fact that this picture is an HDR, and yet has no real interesting contrast I realized that the reason for this was that the lighting was too flat. I had turned on every light in my room and get a well lit picture, and it is well lit, but the light is quite flat. So, I figured I needed to add some dramatic lighting. Meaning using one single light source that hasn't been reflected off of anything. The closest thing was a battery discharger I used to use. It's comprised of about 12 automotive light bulbs and runs off a R/C battery pack.

Kind of a strange light source, but it introduced some interest into the pictures.

Things were going better at this point, but I wanted something a bit more dramatic, something that would catch the edges of these trophies and really accentuate their lines. Well, I thought, light painting is dramatic as hell, but I'm not sure if the light streaks will take away from the trophies. I started by using a lighter, and after the third 30 second exposure I was starting to burn the hell out of my thumb! The metal on the ends of those BIC lighters get awfully hot when you hold them horizontal for that long!

Here is the first attempt. I went up and down the rows with the lighter. At this point I hadn't blocked off my window or closed my laptop, so there is quite a bit of light in the background. The room was really dark, but not dark enough to provide the kind of contrast I needed.

So, I blocked off my window and closed my Macbook up. The results were much better. More contrast, and I had more control with the lighting.

30", ƒ10.0, ISO100, 50mm

I desaturated this one a bit. I also isolated the highlights and cut them to new layer in photoshop. Then I took the shadows down darker using the levels adjustment in PS. The line of the lighter in this one went a bit wild, I was hoping to give a flow left to right and front to back, but the trail of the flame doesn't come out that smooth, because the flame flickers about when you move the lighter.

Rows again. This was the best of the lighter only shots.

Oh, Yeah, click on the pics for full resolution! Much better!

30", ƒ10.0, ISO100, 50mm again

I did the same editing with this photo as well. The edit isn't severe, but I just wanted to make the contrast a bit stronger, and of course just twisting the contrast knob wildly isn't going to do that properly, so there was a more layers utilized in this one too.

Well, by this point my thumb can't take anymore, I'm dropping the lighter and howling in pain, in the pitch black some madman. That's when I pulled out the cell phone to bring some light in with absolutely no pain at all. The light from the phone is much less intense though, so I increased the ISO on my camera to 400 and opened up the aperture a bit.

30", ƒ5.6, ISO400, 50mm

The streaks come across like some kind of celestial gas formation, or the tail of Haley's comet. I love the sense of motion they create, and the colour is beautiful. It's possible to vary the intensity of the colour in each streak by changing the speed at which you move the light source. I also hovered the light under the peak of each trophy to add some more light to each trophy. The depth of field is a bit shallower in this one too, which is unfortunate, but without the aperture being wider there wouldn't be much colour/light at all, even with a 30" exposure. The only editing I did to this shot was to change the white balance a bit afterwards. It was a bit to warm.

Another shot.

30", ƒ5.6, ISO400, 50mm

Less streaking here, but with a bit stronger colours, because I went a bit slower. The lower volume of streaks gives some of the focus back to the trophies. You can see a bit of a yellowish light in lower right corner here. I put a little flash from the lighter in at around the 10 second mark. I did try using the two lights together, but the results were a bit strange. The light from the lighter just over powered the cell phone.

Well, that's enough for right now. I did a bit more light painting with car models after this. I'll post that up soon.