Long exposures

[Rufus]

This may be a well-trodden path and possibly considered a very 20th century experience, but my club spent an enjoyable evening recently with a pixel stick, a light tube and some wire wool. My objective after the shoot was to make some images that were likely to be a bit different from others in the club, and in that I mostly succeeded.

The pixel stick is a a long stick of LEDS which create a picture as someone walks across the scene carrying it vertically. While taking the photograph I had no idea what the stick would produce. In this case it was programmed as flames. It produced a very pixelated rendition of flames which I attempted to improve in photoshop. I also did some dodging and burning on the tree in the midground and removed some distant lights:



Next up was a light tube displaying with different colours at each end with an unlit centre segment. I tried to bring some creativity to the post processing by adding a graduated coloured background to one gently cropped image, a harsher crop to provide a more balanced image with a black background and finally selected segments that look like floating ribbons on a contrasting background:







Someone then swung a white light in circles while gradually turning around on the spot. The timing of my original image meant there was a stray lead-in to the globe effect, so I decided to take advantage of that by copying the image and inverting the copy and then joining them together with some judicious editing. As the original was slightly out of focus I chose to emphasise that by reducing the clarity etc. I then also changed the colour of the subject:



One person has a coat of small lights which he moved around in. Most of the images this created were not good: too many lights and too much dynamic range as long exposures captured multiple light trails. On one occasion I took a shot before he started moving and I have attempted to make something interesting out of it by combining four instances in a rotation, and again adjusting the colour to my taste:



Finally came the wire wool which produced an effect similar to what we in the UK call a Catherine wheel. The central circle had a blown out circumference so I used the AI tools in Photoshop to replace it. Ths also ensured the person making the effect was eliminated from the image.

[DanK]

Interesting. I've done a little light painting, but nothing this creative.