I spent the past weekend geeking out on light painting. There's maybe six days during a month where there is no moon, or at least not enough to mess up the exposure. But between having to work, crappy days of weather, whatever else; that shrinks to two or three days. It ends up being a couple late nights and sleeping in some the next morning.
Saturday I tried a new location. I know a gentleman in Kokomo who has a nice collection of restored cars. I've even gotten a chance to drive one or two of them. The one I was interested in was not so restored. At all.
This is a car built by Elwood Haynes, an inventor, car builder, all-around smart guy who lived in Kokomo around the 1890's.
Short history lesson: He is considered having built the first American automobile, even before Henry Ford. Haynes built his first car in 1894, and Ford built his first car in 1896. You can even look it up on Wikipedia.
Anyway, this guy I know has this Haynes sitting out in the field next to the road leading up to his house. When he bought it, the car wasn't really in shape to be restored, but over the years he's stripped parts off it for other Haynes cars he has restored. It sits, it rusts, it looks like part of the landscape.
This was a light painting I knew I would get around to eventually. Indiana doesn't have much going for it. But the one thing it has, particularly for a photographer/light painting is classic midwestern scenes.
After playing around with a straight on image of the car, I lowered the tripod. Working the camera up underneath the front bumper, I tried this angle. I liked all the weeds obscuring the grill just a bit.
Like I said, I geeked out on light painting. Sunday I went out to a barn I've been to before..... and I whiffed. Shot for a couple hours, came home. Looked at the images the next day, nothing. I just had nothing that I thought worked. It happens sometimes.
Monday, I re-visited a location I've already been. Back in October I checked out this gas station. For that image I had composited the final picture using Photomatix HDR software to take separate portions of the overall scene I had light painted and using the software I combined all those portions into one image. It worked ok, but for that particular scene, I just felt like it didn't work as well as I wanted. Someone who looked at an 8x10 print of it would probably think it looked ok. Except I could look at the original image on screen, zoom in, see all the imperfections caused by the software.
Those imperfections are what drove me to go back and re-shoot the scene. And I am happier with this result.
The original image from October.
The new image.
The angle between the two images is a bit different. But I felt like the new image is blended together better.
Starting out tho, I couldn't find an image. I was trying a different angle when I first got there, and it wasn't working. The image looked like I was hitting the scene with a lighthouse, not light painting technique. After the previous night at the barn, I thought maybe I was losing my mojo. I couldn't find the light I was looking for.
I moved to this angle, slowed down, started switching up my light between my spotlight and my Maglite. And it started coming together. Looking at the two images side-by-side, the one thing I like about the original is the yellow light of it. It looks old, sort of antique. The light in the new image is more white. That's a result of the tungsten white balance I was using. Although I was shooting raw files, I went with tungsten because it seemed to help the sky color. That bit of brightness behind the station is the light of the town a mile away and Kokomo beyond that. Using daylight or AWB turned that sky pretty cruddy.
That's a problem in Indiana, among many problems. Don't get me started. Light pollution is really bad in most places, which of course doesn't help in light painting. Most people don't see it or don't think about it. But in a five or ten minute exposure, it really shows up. I can control moon light by only shooting during a new moon. I wish I could force a town to shut their lights off. Not to get all "green" but I wish there would be more those worldwide blackout nights.
One other image I shot and played around with a bit in Photoshop. Looking for that antique look. Not sure it completely works, but it's interesting to look at.
I've got some other images from these two scenes uploaded to my Sportsshooter.com page.
All images are copyright of Erik Markov.
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