Weekly Photo Contest: July 22 - July 29 (Techniques/Manipulation)

Schtumple said:

MacCruiskeen - I'm not entirely sure I understand this one? Could you clarify what the manipulation or technique is on this shot?

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The Agfa Clack is a German instamatic from the 1950s. The technique is point & shoot. The results are unpredictable. That is all there is to it--complete randomness.

Congrats acearchie.

Thanks Schumptle for your comments. I have so much to learn as an amateur. I never expect to win as there are far to many people on here that have way more talent than I do. Appreciate your comments though.

Schtumple said:

Laird Knox - So many techniques! I really love this, there's so much information happening all at once, it's such a densely packed shot (in terms of imagery), but it works well, as someone who's dabbled in some pretty awful light painting I can only imagine how hard this was to set up.

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Thanks for the time and critique!

Overall it wasn't too difficult to pull off. The thing that gave me the most trouble was actually the stitching. The sculpture's title kept ghosting and wouldn't blend properly. Luckily I had just picked up Autopano Giga for this experiment into long exposure panos. With a little trial and error I was able to figure it out well enough to get the image to stitch properly.

The light painting was all done with a handy device from ProtoMachines. I was a bit pressed for time on this night of shooting so I only used the standard preset colors but you can dial in any color you wish. It has become my go to for light painting. I'm curious what the new version will bring to the table. I hear from somebody that has worked with a prototype that it will be a great tool.

The one last thing that was a bit of a trick. The movement of the stars was all wrong. The Earth's rotation caused them to move towards the sculpture and I wanted them to be flying up and away from it. To do this I simply ordered the frames in reverse before I stacked the images.

One difference I might try in the future is to take the shot when there is some moonlight. That would give the hill in the background some depth and you would also be able to see the mountains in the distance. A slight change in perspective would bring the mountains a bit further up in the frame.

I have shot this scene more than once and I will return again. It is such a unique place that there is always something else to be seen. I've even used a related sculpture as my 404 image:



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Oh and it is a densely packed shot in pixels too. The final image is somewhere between 50 and 60 MP.