Light Painting Photo Shoot

Light Painter

Here are light painting photos I shot last weekend Saturday afternoon with model Molly. It was a fun experimental shoot trying different effects to create unique portraits. I was very pleased how the photos came out and Molly is an excellent model. This is the first time I used my home-made
http://andymodlaphotography.blogspot.com/2012/05/photographers-led-light-stick.html
and DIY design four foot LED light stick with a model, other than testing on myself and our cats.

For this shoot I turned my garage into a make-shift temporary studio with a black background and all light blocked out. At first I thought I could do this shoot outside at night, but after some experiments I found neighbor's lights, the street lamp, and the weather made it less than optimal and  not controlled.

I mounted a Cactus V5 radio trigger on my LED light stick for triggering both the camera shutter and LED stick, starting the LED display just after the shutter opens. While the shutter was open, I moved the LED light stick behind or to side of Molly. Before the shutter closed, two portable strobe flashes were triggered, one for the key light and another for fill light. Shoot through umbrellas softened the light from both flashes. I varied the exposure time from 8 to 15 seconds depending on the image size displayed by the LED light stick. For the camera aperture I used  either F11 or F13 with manual focus. The images displayed by the stick had to be modified to have low gamma, because the LEDs are too bright without adjustments at these F-stops.

Adobe Lightroom processed the raw Nikon images from this shoot and used Photoshop Elements for editing.

Reflecting on this successful shoot, I can see ways to improve the results. Looking forward to more light painting shoots.

Holding the Flag

Flower Power

The Scream

Background light from painting by Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893.

Cat in the Studio

Flag Stars

Random Colors

Rainbow Twirl

Made In America Festival Philadelphia

Got to see the Budweiser Made In America festival concert  in Philadelphia over live and recorded video streaming this weekend. The video stream repeated today. It was great in HD video on my iPad, very sharp, great sound quality. Had to use the Atomic browser because Safari did not work well with the stream. Watching the video was almost as good as being there, better in some ways.

The groups and artists I was able to see so far were Run-DMC, Rita Ora (like), Hives (these guys rock), band X (like), Jill Scott (like), Eve, Rita Ora, Santigold (like), Jill Scott, Gary Clark Jr.. Missed Jay-Z, Pearl Jam.

Little Red Riding Hood

Models: Alia and Billy

I had no plan to make a Little Red Riding Hood photo when I went to the 3rd Photato Salad meet-up photo shoot and picnic on August 26, sponsored by the the Philadelphia Glamour Photography Group at the Ridley Creek state park near Newtown Square, PA. Albert Hefner did a great job organizing the event for models, makeup artists, stylists, and photographers. There were about 120+ participants. Had a great time. Unfortunately I could not meet or photograph every model there.

I made this Little Red Riding Hood composite photo from 3 images taken at the shoot using Photoshop to combine them. My two models, Alia and Billy, did a great job.

Grace Modla, my sister-in-law, suggested this video link and song to match my photo:



More photos from the shoot to follow...