I've been shooting automotive for close to a year now and lately I've started to give light painting a shot. Here's my first (serious) attempt at it. I'd love to hear some constructive criticism on it!
I've been shooting automotive for close to a year now and lately I've started to give light painting a shot. Here's my first (serious) attempt at it. I'd love to hear some constructive criticism on it!
I've never done any of the light painting, but I think the first thing I'd do is pop some wireless flash for the interior portion, then see where it needs a bit of light on the outside areas.
Thanks Roger! You mean you'd start inside and work out?
Possibly, but again I have never done any 'light painting' so don't take my comments as 'gospel' and the fact that you're doing something new to widen your horizons is great. Keep it up.
Charles - did you do this as a layered shot, or just one take? If you're shooting the interior, just do it as a separate shot then blend it in- doesn't have to be first or last. Also doesn't have to be done with a speed light. If you see the interior on my BRZ in my portfolio, it was done with an LED light.
I did it as one take. I long exposed for 15 seconds I believe and then walked across the car with an LED wand. Would you suggest a better way? Do you long expose when you do light painting or does it depend on the situation?
Hi Charles, there's probably a heap of youtube video's out there on how to do it. So I wonder whether me adding one more is worth the time, but if I do one, I'll call it the Charles Kennedy Tutorial just for you :) haha, i'm just mucking around.
But seriously, the way I approach it is to break the car down into segments you want to light. Then set the shutter open, light a certain part of the car, close shutter (I don't use bulb mode though, just what is right to control ambient light), then move onto the next part of the car. As you already have the camera on the tripod, all the different photo's will always line up assuming your tripod didn't move, or the head didn't droop during all the shots. Then you open them as layers in photoshop and use the appropriate masking and blend modes to join all the segments together.
If you're holding the LED light with your arm and having to walk around the car, you need at least 6 seconds shutter speed to keep you invisible. If I can't get 6 secs, I use a speedlight/strobe. I personally like 10-15secs. If you have to close down the aperture heaps to get the shutter speed you need, you may find the LED light not powerful enough depending on what you're using. Just get out there and experiment. I started out doing one shot takes too, but you're going to have to layer and multi-shot to get the best out of it.
I love the moodiness of the shot and the composition. Where I think you could improve it a little is to have more of a rim light painted across the roof so the top and back of the car and overall shape can be defined and so the car doesn't melt into the background. People keep telling me that the eyes are drawn to the brightest part of the image, which in this case happens to be around the headllight area. All I keep thinking when I see all that detail around the headlight is that from the lip up to the bonnet just above the headlight would make a nice close up detail portrait mode shot.
So maybe if it was me, I'd dial back the overall brightness of the highlight to the left of the drivers side headlight so it matches the rest of the details a bit more and do a roof highlight to get more of that overall car shape to be defined. I'd probably also smooth the transition between the blue on the bumper and the greeny grey so it's less of a straight line cutoff from one colour to the other. Plus after I'd matched all up maybe bring up the exposure of the whole car up a bit.
However, note that it's just my opinion, whilst I've done a fair bit of light painting with cars, I don't claim to be a God on this subject and happy for people to disagree with me.
All great points, dude! Thanks a bunch!