First, I’m glad to have made such an impression on so many of you, and I’m super glad to finally be in the 6 score club. I’m proud of this shot, but I’m certainly not the first person to do this.
I had seen this technique shown in several photo technique books. Some call it light painting. (By the way, “The Photographer’s Handbook” by John Hedgecoe is the best one-stop-shop for photography I’ve seen.)
There were a couple of DPCers who caught my eye using this technique. Notably,
nico_blue  (I love this shot.)
A similar effect was achieved on July 4th by every photo of a kid with a sparkler.
First, I found a light I could use. I tried my home flashlight…
But that didn’t work too well…
I was going to go to buy a small pinpoint light from Wal-Mart, but I realized that I could take my spare strobe light, tape some cardboard over it with a small hole and turned on the model light. (If you do this, make sure you don’t start a fire. That light gets hot.) This would be my home-made light-wand.
That seemed to work…
Aside for the strobes, the room was dim so nothing else would show up in the photo that wasn’t brighter than the strobes’ reflection off of me. I used a soft-box and a couple of strobes to light the shot. As you can see by the shadows, I could have planned that better.
The camera shutter was set to stay open for 4 seconds. So, the shutter opened, the strobes went off capturing me in a silly pose staring up at the ceiling. After the strobes went off I had 3 seconds to grab my light-wand, position it, turn the model light on, move it in a circle, and turn it off before the shutters closed.
The light was hard to keep steady and move in a good circle. I used the strobe’s stand to pivot. That helped.
Once I knew it could work, the rest was trial and error…
After a hundered shots or so, I figured I had enough good shots and processed these…
I chose to submit this…
I knew there were some problems with this shot…
1) My shirt was wrinkled. I couldn’t in all honesty go for the pristine angel look. I’m partial to the humanized angels of DOGMA.
2) My eyes are dark. Although I had plenty of lighting, I decided to keep dark eyes. They appealed to me and I think they complemented the smirk.
3) I didn’t like the shadow on my neck cast by my shirt. It is there because I was too lazy to go back and reshoot.
4) There is a black spot on my left collar, but that was my best wrinkled, white, collared shirt.
5) My paper background over my right shoulder has a wrinkle in it, but I didn’t notice until post-processing. I should have put a strobe on it.
6) The mirror in my camera needs to be cleaned to remove dust. It is shameful that I still haven’t cleaned it.
Feel free to ask or comment more if I didn’t explain. I know there are lots of people here who can answer them if I don’t get back to you.
Thanks again for your comments and votes. It is late here, and I’ve got to go to bed.
Brian.
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