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

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

Light Painting Part II

So a day or two after I finished the initial light painting of the RSX, I kept having an itch to try it again to get better results. I wasn't happy with how the car appreared to "glow" and looked too close to poorly done HDR. I figured that the glow was a result of the light source being too strong, so I took the Cobra LED torch and wrapped a piece of ordinary printer paper around it to diffuse the light a bit...a poor man's softbox, if you will.

I concentrated much more on getting each individual panel lit evenly this time so that there wouldn't be as many hot spots. I stayed about 5-8 feet away from the car and moved the LED torch in smooth, arcing motions. I also concentrated on getting dynamic shadows and highlights too, since that is what always catches my eye when I'm looking at studio shot images.

In post, I took a lot more time blending the panels together, keeping a close eye on all the shadows and highlights and taking time to remove any hot spots. Again, it was a very laborious process, but worth it in the end. I think that the end result turned out much better this time, and I will definitely use this method from now on.

The final result:



A short video showing all the layers slowly being added to the final image. It's best to watch this in full screen so that you can really see everything coming together:



Hoping to do some rig shots of the RSX this afternoon if time permits. I'll be sure to post them up here if I'm able to shoot today!

Theo

Trying Out Light Painting

So after gathering some inspiration from other light painters that I've seen on the internet, I decided to try my hand at it myself. I liked the idea of being able to create complex light from a very simple source. It seemed simple enough at the start, but I soon learned that there is MUCH more to it than I'd first thought. It takes a lot of concentration, attention to detail and trial an error. I'm happy with my first attempt, but I definitely need much more practice with it. Read on for my take on light painting!

I bought a Cobra Handheld LED bar light off Amazon since it had a cigarette lighter charger included for outside shoots and seemed to have a nice flat beam. Once it arrived, I went out to the garage to give it a try.

Here's a shot of the Cobra



At first, I was trying to do 30 sec exposures that encompassed the whole car in light, but it just wasn't achieving that "slippery" look that I wanted. I adjusted to 10 sec exposures and would quickly "paint" one particular panel quickly, then shut off the light for the remainder of the exposure. I would do one panel at a time, checking after each shot. Definitely time consuming! After I got all the panels covered, I tried to get all the accents properly lit too - the door crease lines, hood lines etc. It was hard to keep track of all the pieces that I'd covered, and I ended up missing some (center of the hood, which I had to paint in, rear decklid among a few others).

Here's a combined shot of all the exposures I used to create the final image.



Once in post, I combined all the collected images into one single layered image and began the meticulous process of masking off each individual layer. Labeling the layers (ie - "door" "hood" "door crease line" etc) helped the process out a lot.

After that, I did some minor sharpening and lens correction and reduced the saturation just a bit to get the look I wanted. For my first time light painting, I'm pretty happy with it. I need to work on getting the light more even on the panels, and my masking could use some work, but it will all get better with practice. Mainly, I was excited that I could get results like this in my boring, ugly garage!

The final image:




More to come on light painting. Please leave a comment if you have any questions!

Theo


**EDIT - 2/8/11 **

I tried the process again, but this time with a regular piece of printer paper taped around the light bar to diffuse it a bit. I also tried to light the car more naturally, with highlights and shadows to give it a less "CG-like" look. So far I like it a lot! The below picture is still a work in progress. The image is a composite of many that are straight out of the camera with no editing. It is a bit dark at the moment, but I will fix all that once I'm done piecing together the layers.

Thanks for checking it out!

Theo