Slippery
by
TechnoShroomComment: Thanks for the kind words everyone. (Well, almost everyone.)
Quite a few of you have asked how this was done. It's just a long exposure, manual settings, and an external flash taken in the evening. I had my GF drive down the street while I took the photo. It took several tries over two evenings to get it about half right. The first night all the exposures were good but the tail lights were all wrong. The just didn't follow the path that I wanted them to. It took a long time for her to come around the very long blocks so she could make another pass. I guess I couldn't adequately express what I wanted so there were many takes that were just garbage.
Before the second evening I drew her a diagram of how I wanted her to drive and at what point she needed to be where. I also got out the walkie talkies that we use when camping so that I could tell her any adjustments that needed to be made while she was in the car. This saved lots of time because I didn't have to take all my stuff to the next block to talk to her and then walk back and set up again. It's an extremely bad idea to stop on this street. It still took a lot of time between shots because the blocks are long and she had to wait for lulls in the traffic before heading out.
Like I said though, it's about half right. The second night I was pretty cavalier with the exposure because I had nailed it the night before so the second night the photos were all underexposed due to different lighting conditions and an accidental turn of the dial that I didn't notice. Also, I would have preferred to have a car at the end of the light streaks as some mentioned but only having one flash made that impossible. The set-up has the camera pointed out toward the street and the flash pointed at the sign at 1/4 power and second curtain. Just enough to light the sign properly but not light up the area around it. The light on the tree is actually her maladjusted right headlight. Something I've been meaning to fix for many months but have just never gotten around to doing. In order to have a car at the end of the lights I would have needed another flash a hundred feet behind the tree and a wireless remote to fire it. The distance of the scene is compressed because of the light telephoto I used.
Originally posted by Rusch24:
I do like the picture but I do not understand how you exposed the image without showing the car? I have taken many of this type of image and always have the watermark of the car. Was this photoshoped at all? |
Look more closely, you can see a ghost of the car. It's just not at the end of the lights where one would normally expect to see it. Because the car is dark, it's moving fast, and this was taken late in the evening the car vanishes. Especially when it gets into the distance. There just isn't enough light shining on it to register more than the ground which isn't moving so has had longer to collect light.
Yes, it was "photoshoped" but not in the negative manner that most people imply when they say "photoshoped". I cropped, adjusted the levels to make the image brighter, increased saturation (because I underexposed), pre and post sharpened, and changed the canvas size to create the border. No other editing was done and certainly none that is against the rules or even the spirit of the rules of this site.
Originally posted by Danimal:
Photoshop!
Fake!
Please explain how you did it without Photoshop! |
Ask your doctor to up your dose. You're starting to lose it. :)
Photographer found comment helpful.
