(Camera: f/10, bulb, ISO 100, Daylight White Balance; Flash dialed down to 1/4th power)
Self Critique
One day last year when I was exploring the woods behind my apartment complex, I found the bridge that I used in my Painting with Light shot. It really is just an old, abandoned stone bridge in the middle of the woods, so I thought it would be perfect for a creepy Halloween themed picture.
To accomplish the shot, I decided to light the bridge with a flashlight, and then flash my strobe once at Tara to give her a ghost effect. I brought a light meter with me to find out how long to use the flashlight on any one point, but we couldn’t get it to work, so I just experimented and determined that I needed to hold it for about 3 seconds on each part of the bridge when I stood about 8 feet away.
I put a snoot and a red gel on my strobe to give a sort of bloody effect. I just imagine that if there really were ghosts, they would be here because they killed people. Unfortunately the red gel looks a little pink. My guess is that the yellow of the flashlight coming through Tara makes the red appear pink. Oh well. I calculated that I should fire the strobe once at half power from 8 feet away with my camera at f/11 in order to make her see-through. I found that that put too much light on Tara, and I wanted her more transparent, so I dialed the flash down to 1/4th power. At first I ran into some problems with Tara’s arm and the candle creating a shadow when I had my strobe on the side, so I moved the strobe more in front of her. Some of the light from the strobe spills off Tara and onto the bridge. If I were doing this again, I would try to aim the strobe from higher up to see if I could have gotten the extra light to disappear into the background.
My camera was set at f/10 (I think I accidentally changed it from 11 at some point, but I didn’t notice in the dark), bulb exposure, ISO 100, and daylight white balance.
great visual diary we always want to see how you make your images!!!
drea