What’s Your Preference?

Stryker · #1 (**permalink**) 10-22-2009, 03:17 AM

Deepawali, our three day festival of lights, concluded Monday. It was a long fun-filled weekend for us here in India. This is an image of my nephew holding a sparkler and turning around a full circle while simultaneously whirling the sparkler around.

It definitely does look better larger, so please click through and view that.

EXIF:
Shutter: 5 seconds
Aperture: f/16
ISO: 400
Exposure: -1.3 EV
Focal length: 38 mm
Flash: Fired

I don't have a tripod but there was a handy wall opposite so I placed my camera on it and set it in shutter mode and dropped the exposure way down so that the image would not be blown out. I also had the flash raised so that I could freeze the boy at the start of the exposure, but that didn't work out too well, maybe the on camera flash does not have sufficient range. He was about 12 to 15 feet away from the camera.

The two blown out lights on the top part are the porch lights which I couldn't crop out or leave out of the frame altogether because of where they were in relation to where the camera was placed. The image shown above is the top third, I had to crop the bottom and some on the left due to wasted space.

Not much PP work, apart from the crop. I boosted the contrast a little bit, +5 on the saturation and sharpened it using the High Pass Overlay technique.

Any comments or critique is appreciated.

Bianca.Tarleton · #2 (**permalink**) 10-22-2009, 08:09 PM

I like it! A very unique shot, you almost don't know what it is until you take a closer look. Very intriguing!

leonaashlee · #3 (**permalink**) 10-23-2009, 01:27 AM

Really very cool...I like it

Stryker · #4 (**permalink**) 10-23-2009, 05:35 AM

Thanks for appreciating it. I really wish I could have frozen him either at the beginning or at the end of the exposure with the flash, it would have made for a much more interesting image. Maybe it is time for that external flash unit after all.

KazeFox · #5 (**permalink**) 10-24-2009, 06:48 AM

WoW !! Fantastic, great effect !!

Stryker · #6 (**permalink**) 10-24-2009, 08:11 AM

Hey thanks, KazeFox. I was kind of surprised myself that the photo came out as well as it did.

03mach1speed · #7 (**permalink**) 10-24-2009, 01:43 PM

I thought it came out very well also. Deffinately do it again and get rid of those porch lights...

Stryker · #8 (**permalink**) 10-24-2009, 03:25 PM

Thanks for appreciating the photo, 03mach1speed. I have to wait a year to do it again, as these things are not usually available at any other time of the year. But do it again I will, probably with a more controlled environment next time.