Painting with Light

The dark Sith Lord falls to the Jedi Knight as the epic Star Wars
battle between good and evil rages on.

(f/8, ISO 100, bulb exposure=116 sec.)

Diagram:

Originally I wanted to go outside and do something because I really liked the photos that we looked at in class and similar to what we did in lab out at the park. But then I started talking with Alex about what he wanted to do and I liked his idea and thought that with his epic battle there needed to be some closure.

So for the technical stuff. We ended up just staying in the studio, dropped the black background, and painted. The shutter was on bulb and my metadata says that the shutter was open for 116 seconds, ISO 100, and f/8. I had Alex’s roommate Daniel on his knees in the middle of the background, Alex stabbing him so that just his hands were in the frame. Now, the trick was, with all of us in use there was no one there to cover up the camera if need be and there was only ONE light saber. So, with them in position, I opened the shutter and taped it open, and the light saber was on blue stabbing Daniel. They held. I walked over to the side and popped my strobe with a 1 ½ red filter on ½ power two times from the bottom right corner of the background. It was angled up toward Alex’s face and highlighted the back of Daniel. It provided a nice silhouette and we were able to create dual highlights on Alex’s arms. I popped the strobe one more time from that side aimed directly at Daniel’s head to give him a stronger silhouette and highlight the tops of Alex’s arms. I moved around the back of the background to the other side because remember the light saber is still on. And once there, I popped the strobe once more angled from the back directly onto Daniel’s face. Alex then turned the light saber off, handed it to Daniel, Alex went to cover the camera with the black card. Once it was covered, Daniel turned the light saber on red, because we only had one saber to use, and I turned on my flashlight to paint his face and hand with the saber in it. I used my mini mag light through the red 1 ½ filter and painted his face, down the front of his body, and moved to the front of the back drop to paint his hand holding the light saber and move back up his body to end on his face. Then Alex closed the shutter.

I used the red filter to give contrast and add the red feeling to it. I like that in the back it looks like there’s smoke almost. I like that there is the feeling of movement in the photo because I think that it makes for a more realistic death scene. It looks like he is slumping over and the saber is falling out of his hands. Thinking about it now, I could have had him drop the light saber and just exposed a couple of seconds with it sitting on the floor too. Hmmm. Hind sight.

Anyway, with all of that going on, I was pretty impressed that it didn’t take us two hours to get it. I think I still could have popped the strobe once more or painted for some extra time. Hind sight is 20/20. But I liked the photo at the time, and still like the photo, but think that I still could have done better. We spent a lot of time on Alex’s and did a lot of trial and error, so I had his mistakes to work from.

I had another idea of how I wanted to create the death scene and paint him with blood, but we liked this one so much that I just rolled with it and didn’t try to create the other one.

I like this kind of picture making though. It allows for a lot of creativity and originality to create a vision that is uniquely your own.