Fun times in the Arizona desert… painting with lights at an abandoned gold mine.

Caryn Esplin Goldminers Cabin - Light Painting - GoldEye Mine - Quartzsite, Arizona

In this first light painting I wanted to leave some dark areas to show the blackness of the night all around me. It was definitely spooky to be in this abandoned gold mine all alone. Especially when I thought I saw a flashlight across the dirt road shining toward me. I did not have cell service and this was quite a distance back down a dirt road. I had been here a few times in the daylight and there was never a soul in sight, but maybe some scary drug runners use this area as a place to camp out? Then when the coyotes started howling, I was creeped out for sure. But it was finally the thought of ghosts that motivated me to get out of Dodge. But not until after I had several good light paintings, of course… Ha Ha!  I started worrying that the ghosts of these old goldminers would not like me disturbing their cabins, even though I left everything the way I found it. I was grateful others before me had done the same.

This above image is one single photo. I love the way it turned out and it just might prove to be one of my favorite raw light paintings. The aperture is 8.0 and I used two Makita lights to “paint the light” in for 10 seconds while my camera rested on a tripod.  

Caryn Esplin - Goldminers Cabin - HDR Light Painting - Eagle Eye Mine - Quartzsite, Arizona

You see more detail in this shot because it is a combination of three different exposures (light paintings) of the same scene. I simply placed my camera on a tripod and revealed the scene from the dark three separate times with a flashlight. I exposed different areas of the frame each time them merged the images together to bring everything to life. I also added some tonemapping to enhance and define some of the textures and details.