Terence's Blog

Friday night after game night with the boys, I stopped off at a park in Redmond to attempt another attempt at light painting. It was raining, so the ground was nice and wet. Of course, no sooner than I had set up the camera a King County sheriff came flying up the road and pulled into the parking lot across the street. The cop had enough sense of humor to let me setup all my lights and camera gear first, before driving up and turning on the disco lights *WHILE* I was taking my picture and telling me that I’m not allowed to be in the park after dark (even though there were no posted signs). I desaturated the colors so I won’t get the amber hazard lights in my shots here:

Next night I went to a dog park up on Aurora. Last year I dated this girl, whose roommate can be charitably described as “socially maladjusted and less than pleasant to be around”. In an attempt to ease relationship a bit I tried a little bit of “BBQ diplomacy” by hosting a small BBQ and inviting her (the roommate) along. Well, the BBQ diplomacy failed – some people are just difficult and mean in nature – but I did get something positive out of that afternoon. The photographer in me realized that the parking lot had no street lights and thus would be a low-ambient place for light painting cars…

Here’s an ambient light only, 90 second exposure to give you an idea how dark the place is:

(The flash had slid off the hotshoe adapter, and thus refused to fire. It took me about a minute or so before I can get it reset, and by then I decided to stop the exposure to get a baseline.

Here’s with the SoftLighter up high:

And a bit of lightroom tweak:

For the most part I’m pretty happy with how these shots turned out. Moving forward, these would be the things I would try:

* Add a neutral density filter to the camera to further knock down the ambient
* Up the firepower of the strobes, probably to something along the lines of an Alien Bee
* Use a proper large softbox, to achieve more even lighting.
* Come equip with a better power source – maybe time to DIY a Li-Ion vagabond pack?
* Try flooding the asphalt to create a smoother surface for reflections.

By adding a neutral density filter, I should be able to find more places to be able to shoot from.

Work had been kicking my butt lately – between 60hr work weeks, and having to deal with Mom coming home (and thus having to divert time and resource to straighten up the house), I just have not had the time to work on projects or shoot.

So, when I found out that there’s an empty warehouse I have access to, I took the opportunity to do some car light painting. It’s very hard to find a place where I can (mostly) control my ambient lighting to light paint a car.

Here’s my “weekend car”, the Spirit of Adventure, named after the airship in Pixar’s “Up”. (My coworker’s daughter commented that I reminded her of Russell… and I plan on taking this car on multiple photography adventures in the years to come, so I figured it’d be a fitting name). She’s a 2009 Mazda Premacy / Mazda5 Grand Touring with HID headlights and a few high tech refinements in the works.

With the overhead florescents on, we are looking at about a 3 second exposure at f/11 @ ISO 100.
Of course, this gives us a picture of a car in an empty warehouse. Hardly exciting.

Next, I turned the garage lights off, and walked around the car popping an AlienBees Ring Flash at 1/32 power at the car. Just a real quick multi-pop job. The diffuser is on the ABR.

Ringflashes, with a diffuser, is really good at throwing light EVERYWHERE. And I mean, EVERYWHERE. Aside from reflecting in ugly splotches on my car’s body work, it lit the entire warehouse up.

Next, i tried using my Photek Softlighter with the ABR. This gives me better control over the bounce. Unfortunately, the ABR’s umbrella adapter attachment is really badly designed, and the umbrella collapsed under its own weight. By some miracle the ribs collapsing onto the unit didn’t shatter the flash tube (the ABR actually belongs to my ex-girlfriend, whom I haven’t seen since our breakup – and I still would like to be friends with this girl…). Needless to say, the umbrella came off after that.

And just to see what a ring flash from the camera’s perspective would look like, here’s the ABR800 @ full power, single shot:

Note the tale-tale ring of shadow on the wall behind the vehicle.

Frustrated, I knew that I could create a nice big and soft light source by firing the ABR at full power at one of the white walls. This lit my car evenly. It also lit the rest of the warehouse evenly.

Then it dawned on me to try a different light painting technique – with a flashlight. I grabbed one of the LED flashlights off a coworker’s desk, and gives it a try. (I really need to redo this with a bigger throughput flashlight, but for now I’m working with what I’ve got).

Hey! Not bad! I should put a lens hood-like device on the flash light to prevent spill from the flashlight from being picked up by the lenses. During this exposure I also got into the car and flicked on the headlights and hit the hazard lights briefly – thus the fog lights and such being on. I also made a point to hover a bit longer at the wheels with the LED flashlight to make the wheels pop more.

Note the significantly longer exposure – the LED flashlight is pretty weak sauce, compared against an ABR800, even at 1/32 power. The ambient sodium vapor light coming in through the skylight above the door is really making its presence known on the wall behind the car, as is just ambient streetlight that’s coming through the blinds.

Tried another shot – this time I kept the flashlight relatively steady and slowly walked down the side of the car, being mindful of the specular highlight on the bodywork as the light traces its way down the panels. (Note to self – avoid the door handles next time – they tend to reflect light all sorts of wierd way). Again, same trick with the hazards – this time I used my keyless entry to get the lights to flash.

Finally, some adjustments and cropping in Lightroom, to give the following images:

A tight crop, with the “psychotic” lighting lines down the side”

And a “safe” shot.

For my next series, I’m going to try to light from a higher vantage point (bring a ladder). Better nail this with my Mazda and my Honda before I go grab MikeZ’s EVO-X …