WINNER: Danny Morgan – for a very accurate guess!
MY PROCESS:
1. I positioned the fruit on a granite countertop, which was surprisingly reflective, even like a mirror.
2. I put my camera on a tripod with these settings: 20″ f/8 ISO 200.
3. I used manual focus to ensure the strawberry was tack sharp.
4. I turned off the lights and started the self-timer to start the exposure.
5. I used an narrow beam LED light to “paint” light on the strawberry and some of the lime, for about 6″ (six seconds), then I turned off my light.
6. I twisted the manual focus ring so it was set to infinity focus.
7. I used the light to “paint” light on the lemon, peach, and blueberry while they were out of focus, for about six seconds, being cautious to not light the strawberry.
Absolutely no editing!
That is what I love about light painting. It rarely needs editing and often looks better than reality because you reveal the subject from darkness by painting it with light, glorious light 🙂
INFO:
On Friday, while on our second class photo excursion this weekend with the new Comm 316 Professional Imaging class, I took this photo just before going to sleep.
PRIZE:
I will give away a new piece of camera gear (YN-460 Flash, Sunpak Pistol Grip tripod, or equivalent) at Christmastime. Each time you win one of these weekly guesses, I enter your name into the drawing. So your chances to win will increase the more often you guess. Right now, five people have their name in the drawing once each: Rebecca Johnston, Blake Jackson, Julie Peterson and Chelsea Beckstead.
GUESS:
Now, can you guess my process for getting this effect, my lighting, and my post production process? Give as many details as you can. Add your comment on this blog post. Just click the “__comments” link above this post. I will reveal the answer and winner tonight, Monday, October 15, after 10:00 p.m. MST Click the image to make it larger. Have fun with this and thanks for participating!
Here are few more of my exposures while I was experimenting…
Ok, here i go, The process was this, An LED flash light was used to light paint the Fruit in the foreground first, carefully avoiding the background fruit, then the lens was pushed out of focus to create perspective blur in the background, which was then painted with light secondly in the same exposure. I’m sure it was super sharp to begin with, so not much post clarity was needed i’m sure, but maybe some sats and vibrancy in Camera Raw.
For this picture you set your camera for a 20 second shutter speed. You then focused on the strawberry and painted it with an LED light, making sure that you didn’t light up any other fruit. You then set your lens to infinity focus, which made all the other fruit blurry. While in the same exposure, you lit up the blueberry, lime, lemon, and peach to get them in the picture as well. I’ll bet it came out pretty clear, so not much post editing was done, unless you turned up the saturation and vibrancy a little bit. I’ll bet these were your settings too: f/8; ISO 200; 20 second shutter speed.
Wow, both of your guesses were very close, but I think Danny had a few more specifics, so I will have to declare him as the winner. Thank you both for entering! By the way, Tim, if you make a comment on three of these Mystery blog posts, I will enter your name in the drawing too. 🙂 I will post the specifics of my process in the post now…
I Love Consolation Prizes!!
Hi – I just found your site and I am learning so much! I am curious…can you explain to me why you would start out focusing on the strawberry and then about 10 seconds in turn it to infinity focus? I have never heard of this technique…all though I am not suprised since I am fairly new at photography. I actually found you because I was googling water droplets and found your fantastic tutorial. THanks again!