Today I drove from Amarillo, TX to Elk City, OK along Route 66. I started shooting around 4am and shot more than 8GB before the sun even came up. I think I filled four 8GB cards total today… when am I going to make time to process all those images? Especially when I’ll be shooting every day, all day long, for the next week.
The photograph above was taken before sunrise this morning at Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, TX. The only light source I used were a few sparklers I bought on the 4th of July. You can see two more images taken from the same vantage point, but in completely different styles after the jump.
Light painting using a headlamp from REI.
I finally figured out how to clone myself, but they all won’t stop arguing with each other.
Hey Ben,
4 8Gb cards in one day ??? Geez, that’s a heck of alot of images – good luck with the processing :o)
The photos with this entry are superb! Are you able to say how you got the effect with the sparklers?
Great stuff as always….happy travels!
Glyn
Ben, that last image is hilarious! Rock on. 🙂
Shooting notes: Camera on tripod and in Bulb mode with cable release. Shot at f13 (I think) with a 17-40mm lens at ISO100. Open the shutter and lock it down via the cable release… sneak behind one of the cars and light a sparkler, then trace the edges of the cars while jiggling the sparker. Once the sparkler dies, go shut the shutter via the cable release… then repeat, painting one car at a time (since the sparkler only lasts that long). Once you get to the end 4 cars, paint two cars at a time since you can only see about 1/8th of the car in the shot, so the sparkler lasts long enough to cover the visible portions.
Stack the images one on top of the other in Photoshop and set the blending mode menu at the top of the layers palette for each layer to either screen mode or lighten mode… then add one last shot exposed for the sky and paint it into the sky to replace the one that contained odd star streaks that looked like dotted lines due to the shutter opening and closing so many times to not capture a smooth star streak.
Hope that helps.
-Ben
Blimey, now that’s what I call a reply :o)
Thanks for all the detail there Ben but I gotta ask…where do you get your ideas from?
Awesome work mate!!!
All the best,
Glyn