It has been a busy weekend so I thought we would have a little fun today. I've seen many photographs where the subject uses a flashlight to write or draw in the shot. Telling my son about it, he was excited by the idea so I figured why not, lets have some fun.
Of course the idea was simple. Light him with strobes at the beginning of a long exposure and let him draw for the remainder. The above was a 6 second exposure lit by two flashes at full power. A 580 EXII camera right shooting through an umbrella as the main light and a 430 EX camera left shooting into a reflective umbrella. Worked well I think. Exposed him just enough that he could move after the flash and draw what ever he wanted without losing any sharpness. I would like to note that the exposure of the background came as a result of the 6 second exposure. Had there been a somewhat normal shutter speed the background would have been black as in some of my previous posts. Thats what ya get when using F22.
Of the more than 100 shots we did the above was my favorite as it captures his personality the most. Yes, he was pretending that he was waving a sword. Boys will be boys after all. The light pattern is nothing but squiggles but I love it just the same. It is a aspect of his personality, that is all I need. :-)
I mentioned the lighting above but do want to make one comment about the flashlight. To do this you need nothing special, we did ours with a $2 LED light from Home Depot. The only modification to it was to toss some green gel on the end so as to get the green color to light, nothing special. Below is a quick setup pic. As always, please excuse my messy basement.
Oh, and yes, that thing in the foreground is my tripod. There is no way I could have held the camera still for 6 seconds otherwise.
A bit of a diversion is in order. We were having such a good time that we dragged my wife over and started playing around with her and the light as well. She drew on Gustavo and he did the same to her. Lets just let it be said that clown hats were in order. In tribute to her participation below is one her contributions where she drew my son's nickname with light. Very fun in my opinion. In case you have trouble reading it, the word is "Nene". It is a Spanish language slang for little boy. Something we have called my son since was born.
So what does everyone think?
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As always go to the Flickr set for all project pictures by Clicking Here. You can also find a full explanation of the project along with an index of the shots by Clicking Here.
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