Red White and Blue Harley

[joe.norman]

Finished Image


With the Fourth of July right around the corner, I was trying to come up with an idea for a picture. Standing in line at Walmart, I saw a set of red, green and blue keychain led lights and a lazer pointer with a white led light, when I got an idea.

Tools

• LED Lights
  
• Tripod
• Remote Switch with shutter lock

1. Start by placing the camera in a tripod facing the subject
2. Set the camera to manual
3. Set the Aperture
4. Frame your subject
5. Take a test shot to make sure the focus sets automatically, then turn off the Auto focus feature on the lens. You will be shooting in the dark and the auto focus has problems focusing in the dark
6. Set the Shutter Speed to BULB
7. Turn off the lights, use the white led light to find your way back to the camera
8. White Composite: Lock open the shutter and turn on the white led light. Wave it back and forth over and under the camera, lighting up the subject. Make sure you don't go in front of the lens, you want the reflections off your subject, not light from the led light. Take a few pictures like this, they will all have a different pattern, giving you more options later for the highlights in the composite. Try not to leave the shutter open for more than 15 to 20 sec., you only want to catch some of the subjects edges with the white light and not a lot of detail
   
   Tv(Shutter Speed): 15Sec.
   Av(Aperture Value): F10
   ISO Speed: 100
   Focal Length: 43.0 mm
   
9. Red & Blue Composite: This is a little more difficult. Take the red light in one hand and the blue light in the other. Open the shutter and do the same as you did with the white light. Try to move both hands in the same patterns, swirling, up and down, side to side...this will make the light patterns look more uniform when finished. The shutter should be open for 30 - 40 sec. Try to light up most of the subject so you get a lot of detail in the finished image. Again take multiple shots, experiment with the light patterns. When you are done wit the lights, be carefull when finding the remote switch, you want to avoid shaking the camera
   
   Tv(Shutter Speed): 39Sec.
   Av(Aperture Value): F10
   ISO Speed: 100
   Lens: EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
   Focal Length: 43.0 mm
   
10. Choose your highlight and color images to composite
11. Use a photo editing software to merge the images, I used photoshop
12. In Photoshop, copy the white image and paste it on a layer over the color image, change the layer properties to screen or difference, I used screen, it seemed to brighten the image more
13. Gaussian Blur the white image layer 1.4 pixels, this will soften the edges
14. Flatten the image and save

Let me know what you think.

[spazoid1965]

Great idea Joe. Cheap tools with great results.

[Peterb]

Joe. What a great job you have done. These are fantastic. Just shows what a little imagination can do. Im now off to buy some led lights

[DogHeadGod]

Love it! Thanks for sharing your technique... I'll be giving it a try

[natydoj]

Brilliant...I'm going to get myself a Harley now.