emellin66
FollowLight painting photograph. A long exposure of a hand-held light show between a boxed mirror configuration and a pane of glass covered with water droplets. No po...
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Light painting photograph. A long exposure of a hand-held light show between a boxed mirror configuration and a pane of glass covered with water droplets. No post-processing enhancements-Photoshopping has been used.
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desertpagan
July 11, 2012
This is wicked cool! I love the colors and the detail! Wonderful work! This would make a really nice screen saver!
jgalarza70
March 03, 2013
Great Job. Do you use Armour all to help get the droplets like that. I have a hard time getting nicely shaped droplets like you did. I wonder if it is because I am using plexi glass instead of real glass.
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
Obviously, this photo is not a landscape, at least from this planet. This photo was taken in the kitchen in my apartment.Time
It is a long exposure light painting, and it was a completely dark setting where all natural and ambient light was blocked out.Lighting
The lighting is the key here, as well as the setting. A pane of glass covered with water drops was placed above a 5-sided mirror configuration. Inside the mirror, I placed multiple color strands of El-Wire and light-up toys. Due to the many layers of reflections, a terrific light show was produced and captured inside the water drops.Equipment
The set up was the most difficult part. I tried many different light-up configurations, different distances between the glass and mirrors and the critical piece, using Rain-X on the glass to get nicely rounded droplets. For this shot, I used a regular macro lens for the close up of water drops. At that time, I was using my very first DSLR camera I ever bought, a Nikon d3000. It was a long exposure, so the camera was mounted on a tripod and no flash. I used a remote shutter release, a critical piece of equipment to prevent shake.Inspiration
It was winter and so cold that going outside was not going to happen for me. I live in NYC and with space in my tiny apartment at a premium, if I was going to take a photograph, it would have to be of a smaller scale. At that time, I had seen a photo of a waterdrops over M&M's, and I thought, how cool would it be if I did a light painting with waterdrops? Many interations later, this was the best shot I got out of a few days of winter hibernation.Editing
There is absolutely no post-processing of any kind. This is the image straight out of the camera.In my camera bag
I currently am shooting with a Nikon d800. My bag has a few lenses. One macro, one zoom, one fish-eye and one prime portrait lens. My bag also is chuck full of a variety of light sources from lasers and light-up toy gizmos, to a suite of flashlights of varying lumen output and color filters. In fact, I spend much more time obsessing about my lighting tools than I do with my camera and lenses. I guess that is what makes me a typical light painter.Feedback
Water droplet shots are fun to do, just have a towel ready and a lot of patience. It took lots of trial and error to get this shot, but it was well worth the effort. Rain-X on the glass is critical. It assures that you will have nice, round beads of water. Spray the glass with a pump hair-spray bottle or perfume atomizer. Why? Those misting sprays generate lots of tiny droplets and with each spray, they get gradually larger until you are satisfied with how they look. El-Wire hates getting wet, so be sure that you are careful to not get the wire wet or it will cease to work. That said, a tiny tiny drop of water is OK. Experiment with a regular water droplet shot before adding a long-exposure/light painting element to the shot. That way you are not terribly frustrated.