Light Painting Part II

I went out to shoot last night with the intention of getting a better grip on light painting. I hadn't really done any since my last post and was itching to try it again. I wanted to get the Houston skyline (cheesy?) in the background, so I did some hunting on Google Maps first for locations that I thought might work.

After driving to the location, I found that the view was perfect; a nice, unobstructed view of the skyline - rare to come by in Houston, it seems. There was only one issue that turned out to be a real problem though. The parking lot had large overhead lighting that bathed the car in an intense white light, which I was worried would make light painting very difficult.

It did.

I spend about 15 minutes painting the nose of the car with limited success, and completely struck out on painting the sides of the car. No matter what settings I used (I mainly stuck with 10sec @ F8), the overhead light simply overpowered my little torch. I decided to take a few ambient exposures to get as much detail as I could, then packed everything up and headed home a bit defeated.

Looking at the photos in post however, I saw that they might actually have a chance. The skyline looked great, as I caught it right at the last hint of dusk and the exposures of the nose when combined added up pretty well.

I started with the original shot of the skyline and built upon it:



I added all the individual exposures that lit individual parts of the nose:



After that, it was a TON of editing to remove annoying and distracting elements like light poles and fixtures. Heavy use of the clone stamp and healing brush here!

As far as editing, I did some minor individual RGB curves adjustments, some sharpening, minor gradients and fiddled with the selective color settings a bit. I also raised the levels just a touch so that the image wasn't TOO dark, although I kind of liked the dark look for this one.

With all that said, I now know that I need a more powerful light source or need to shoot somewhere that is close to pitch black. I did find a good spot though, and I plan on using it again soon in future attempts.

Thanks for looking!

Theo

Thanks to AutoInsane.com for the feature!

I received word today from AutoInsane.com that my RSX photo has been featured in their daily blog. You can view the posting here.

Many thanks to AutoInsane.com for the feature! Please go to their blog to check out all the other great photos and information they have.

New Rig Shots with the Acura RSX

I set out last weekend to get a little more practice with the rig. I hadn't used it since the Ferrari shoot and was itching to give it a try again. The RSX hadn't been washed recently, but due to the lack of rain was still decently clean.

I set out to find a good location and settled on an industrial area in North Houston that had railroad tracks and a nice open area next to them. It was a Sunday, so I figured that traffic would be fairly minimal in the area.

My girlfriend Ashleigh was nice enough to tag along, since it's much easier to set up the rig with two people. We call her the resident "flash-girl". As we were setting up the rig, I saw a worker from one of the factories pop his head out of a door on the side of the building to have a look. He came walking over, which I figured meant that I wasn't going to be able to shoot there. But the first thing out of his mouth was "What the hell is that thing?". He was fascinated that these are the types of tools used to create rolling shots in ads, and had a lot of questions about how the final images comes from this huge "thing" hanging off the car. After his curiosity was satisfied, he walked back towards the door and disappeared into the factory again.

Once I started shooting, I realized that in my haste to get outside and practice, I really didn't think logically. It was midday and the sun was beating down in full force, limiting to no more than a 2 second exposure even with a 3 stop ND filter stacked on top of a CPL. The car was under the cover of a roof extending off the factory, which helped to cut some of the harsh shadows and highlights, however.

As I was shooting, I heard the whistle from a train coming. I quickly set up the car for the shot and was able to take a few with the passing train as a backdrop, which I thought was pretty cool.

I tried taking a few static shots, focusing on different portions of the car so that I could graft them in if the rolling shots had some soft spots. I also took a few while spinning the CPL around to minimize reflections on various body panels and windows.

In post, it was just a jumble of layers, layer masks and cloning. I learned my lesson on using a shorter exposure on rig shots - all the photos still had recognizable backgrounds which made it pretty tough to clone the rig out. Next time I will definitely stick with an exposure time of at least 3 seconds so that I get a nice blur and cloning doesn't take another few weeks off my life.

Once everything was cloned out, I dropped in some donor sky images that I took while in New Mexico to get a more dramatic effect. I also did some high-pass sharpening, some color overlays and slight desaturation to get the final look. I think they both came out well, but the rear rolling shot is clearly the best one. A bit disappointing, as I'd hoped the rolling train would be a great backdrop, but the lack of light on the side of the car in that shot keeps it from being the best it could have been. I'm still happy with both, however!

On to the images!





And the before shots:





Thanks for checking in!

Theo