I've got all sorts of memos for myself typed into my Blackberry. I've got a phone that's a couple years old, but I bought it new from Ebay last year, so it doesn't have internet access etc. But the one thing it's really useful for is making notes to myself about interesting places I'd like to get a photograph and people I've met that might be able to help me etc.
Notes for projects, techniques I want to try. I've got four or five places noted that I thought would make for interesting light painting projects. One of them was a place I went to last year for an assignment. The assignment was about a small gathering of antique Dodge owners from around the country. Where they met was at a house near Kokomo. The gentleman (who I won't name because I don't want people mobbing him) has a really cool antique gas station. He collects antique gas pumps, vending machines etc. He has over the years collected a good amount of items and now has a gas station in his backyard that looks straight out of the 30's.
First attempt of light painting the gas station.Image copyright Erik Markov 2009
I finally decided to give him a call and see if I could get a picture of the station. I explained what I wanted to do, which admittedly sounds pretty crazy. "Sir, I'd like to stand in your backyard for two or three hours - in the dark - and take pictures. Oh, by the way, I'll be running around with flashlights, just generally looking a little bit crazy." That's not the way I sold it, but it might was well have been.
And he still said yes. I think he understood I just wanted to do something different and creative. Not many people get that anymore.
The above image is composed of seven separate images. I shouldn't admit this, light painting "purists" probably see it as an abomination. Doing this on film meant you light painted the whole scene in one long exposure. I decided to use technology to my advantage.
Doing this on film back in the day had its positives and negatives. Film was more forgiving of mistakes, yet you couldn't see what you had until it was developed. You probably could combine shots form different negatives into one image in the darkroom but boy does that sound like a pain in the ass.
What the station might look like for a decent exposure, without light painting.Image copyright Erik Markov 2009
Using digital means you can see immediately what you have, but digital is also less forgiving than film I think. It used to be shooting digital was like shooting slide film, every exposure had to be perfect. Digital has gotten away from that quite a bit, but I still think you have to be pretty precise. The good with the bad.
In doing all the HDR I've kept myself occupied with this year, a technique I came across was using HDR software as a part of processing a light painting image. The basic idea is you light paint each item or person or place in a different exposure, then with the HDR software, you combine all the exposures. Similar to what I did with the cemetery, except I cut out the specific items in Photoshop and then pasted them into a final image.
It's much easier to let the software do it, than spend the time to do it myself. As I said, "purists" probably consider this an abomination. I see it as working smarter. Painting the individual objects in the scene is still work, there are still choices to be made about what kind of light to use, how long to make the exposure etc. The difference between doing this on film or digital is that with film, one mistake can screw up an image that was a 30 minute exposure. And you might not realize the mistake until you got the negatives back.
With digital that mistake can be seen immediately and corrected. Yet doing this scene in one 30 minute exposure can still mean you might make one small mistake at the end of the exposure, wasting that 30 minutes. I think it makes more sense to make one exposure painting a small portion of the scene, and see how that turns out. If it's good, then move onto the next item in the scene. If it's bad, make another exposure until it's right.
Second attempt of light painting the station.Image copyright Erik Markov 2009
I started about 8pm setting up for the first attempt of the station. I played around with that angle for 30 minutes maybe before deciding the second angle had more potential. I felt like being able to see into the building more along with the door, read the station sign to the right and several other factors made for a more complete image. More of a storytelling image. In processing both attempts, I realized both had things to like about them.
I'm sure I'll forget something important to mention here should someone want to try it themselves. One thing is, it's not always as dark out in b.f.e. as one might think. There were some clouds in the sky, but I wouldn't call it completely overcast.
Depending on the night tho, the glow from the light in Kokomo can be seen for 10 or 20 miles. I was only 10 miles from Kokomo here, so in some of the longer exposures the light reflecting off the clouds affects the image a little. My exposures were from 20 seconds to a minute usually, since I didn't need the time to light the whole scene. That's something to think about in a longer exposure, say 5 minutes or more.
I adjusted the sky in each of the images in PS before I combined all the exposures, to correct for some of the weird color casts I had.
Another thing I learned in combining the exposures in Photomatix was not to combine all the exposures at once. The first attempt was 7 separate images, the second attempt was 18 images. The final image worked better from Photomatix if I combined two or three of the exposures at a time. Once I had 7 images that each had two or three images making it up, I started combining two of those images. Basically just a process of stacking the exposures.
There are ways to do all of this exposure stacking in PS, for myself I just find it easier to do in Photomatix. I think the same results, just different wys of going about it.
After doing this one, it's got me excited thinking about the potential of the other places I'd like to try light painting. It also has me thinking about a quote I just came across from comedian Stephen Wright.
"I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it."
He was joking, but thinking about how to excute the light painted scene is probably more important than actually creating the image. Doing the later without engaging in the former probably is going to result in a quite spect-crap-ular image.
The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.
