Not forgetting all the devastation that it's caused and the lives it's wrecked and for that I really feel for those involved, it has also meant that getting out and continuing my work for the light painting project has been very difficult.
However, a break in the weather on Thursday of this week meant that I could at least attempt my first larger scale light painting project.
Below is the contact sheets for 21 shots used out of the 37 taken with torch light to produce a single image.
My inspiration for the image
In previous posts I have sighted the works of Andrew Whyte (image above) and Eric Curry (image below) as individuals that have become experts in painting with light.
I wanted to try and emulate this type of work. Eric Curry in particular has become a real expert in this type of photography and also quite obviously an expert in Photoshop to combine all the photographs he takes into a single image.
I am no expert photographer and no expert Photoshop user, so my expectations for the first image I am going to produce are levelled accordingly.
The process
I shoot in raw, so the first thing I did when I got home was to tweak the colour temperature, as the led torch I used produced a cool blue tinge to the images and I wanted to re-create the white light that the torch emitted.
Once I was happy with the white balance of the images, I then proceeded to save them as jpgs in order to load them as layers into Photoshop.
I then applied a mask to each layer, the reason for this is that I only wanted to use a specific part of each image I had taken.
The intention was that like Eric Curry, I would combine my 21 photographs into a single image.......
Above is a snapshot of the image being produced in Photoshop, hopefully you can see the layers on the right hand side, complete with layer masks.
The Final Image.
Below is the final image after the layers have been flattened and the shadows and highlights tweaked.
What can I say?
Well the overall composition I like, I have the light trails in the background like Andrew Whyte try's to include in his shots.
I have captured the lighting in the foreground and managed to illuminate the inside of the car.
Overall I feel it was a successful first attempt......
Can do better !!!!!
There are a number of issues with the image that will need to be put right.
The car has a dull look to the surface, a "plume" . This was caused by the cold temperatures on the top of the mountain where the photographs were taken. A layer of moisture started to form on the surface of the car during the shoot.
You can see that the side of the vehicle is still quite black whilst the front wing and bonnet have a "light grey" sheen to them.
Warmer temperatures will be required!!!!
My Photoshop skills need improving..... When I combined the layers, there are a few areas where the transition between layers isn't quite right and some of the light trails are missing.
A better sky, I would like to have taken a few shots of the sky at dusk first, before they night fell, This would have enabled me to have more detail in the sky, rather than the "orangey" tinge from street lights.
Overall though, I am happy with my first attempt.
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