That made me chuckle, I've done that before myself.
Thanks! I find monitor gama really makes or breaks this one. Small changes in the can really darken it up quickly. I have printed it out at 20x30 and it really worked well in my opinion. I'm just finishing up some web site programing before I can get back into my photography. Once I do I plan on revisiting this one. I want to try printing it on both regular paper and metallic.
As for the lighthing I'm lucky I didn't break my neck that night. It was extreamly dark - no Moon and the cottages are wedged between some steep hills. I set the camera up on a tripod and took a couple of test shots for the framing. I just looked at the original images and there are only a couple of blurry images and one only lit from inside before this shot. I was using an old manual lens and must not have focused for the first couple but they were so dark it was hard to see on the LCD. (Still better than waiting for the film to develop.)
Once I had the angle I thought I wanted -- it was still hard to tell on the preview -- I set the camera for remote trigger with a three second delay. I triggered the cammera and when the shutter opened up I held a deep blue Rosco gel over a five watt LED flashlight and swept it across the front of the building a few times.
I then turned off the flashlight and dashed over the uneven ground into the room on the left. There I switched to a red gel and waved the light around the room for a couple of seconds. Then in the dark I ran around to the door and the room on the right. Here I again waved the flashlight around trying to give it an uneven wash. Then I stuck my head out the door and triggered the camera. The whole exposure was about 67 seconds.
In this shot you can see how uneven the ground was.
In this and another shot from that night I used way too much light. I like the uneven texture of the red and blue image. The other two are just too flat. I do like the texture of the bricks in this one but overall I ruined the shot in my opinion. In the one above you can also see that I didn't have the flashlight fully covered. There is a bit of white light spilling in the foreground.
If I were to do it again I would try putting a strobe in each room. I would need to find something to breakup the flash to get the uneven wash -- maybe some bottle partially filled with water. Then I could use the flashlight for the front lighting and maybe another strobe or two set very low for some side fill.
Overall it was a fun exercise. I had wanted to do some light painting for a long time and I got really lucky for a first try at it.
