Fire-Spade

[thePike]

I took this photo a couple of days as part of my Photo 365 Project I've undertaken and my friends and family say it's the best I've taken yet (I'm going into my 3rd week).

From 2010

It's a macro picture of Christmas night-light bulb filament that electrifies when powered on.

Setup Info...
Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT
Sigma 28-70mm lens w/ Digital Concepts Macro Attachment
f/32 aperture
20 sec exposure
ISO-100
60mm focal length
no flash
black poster board behind light in dark room

In Photoshop and Lightroom I upped the black a bit to dissolve what was still visible of the bulb and leave only the filament and the flare. I also upped the temp, vibrance, and contrast a bit to make the colors pop.

So... How does it look? Is it visually appealing? Could have guessed what it is if I had not mentioned? Does it look fake? Any pointers on what I may have done differently during the shoot or post-op?

All criticisms are very much welcome. I'm so incredibly new to this that I'm taking any input I can get!

Thanks in advance!

[photog1107]

Very interesting, and no... I would not have guessed that was what it was... at first I thought it might be a hot poker, all lit up, but you managed to take something ordinary and make a nice abstract out of it. I'm curious, did you have to play around with the exposure quite a bit to get the effect you wanted? I am sort of wondering how you managed to get the inside so nice and glowing yellow without totally burning it out.

[thePike]

The filament for this particular bulb is actually two spade-shaped plates that run parallel to one another without ever actually touching. When the light is one the electron's actually glow visibly red as they streak across the surface of the plate and jump the gap. The visible red electron flow constantly moves it's path so my short exposures were only showing a partial glowing effect on part of the spade. With the 20 sec exposure the flowing electrons were able to cover the entire surface of the plate (you can actually see the other plate a little on the left side) giving me a nice even colored surface.

The outline of the bulb itself was actually quite visible before I upped the black in Photoshop thereby blotting it out and setting the contrast of the glowing surface on the black background.