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Smoking Ghost Tires

Here's a light painting shot from our August 24 trip to Bodie State Historic Park.  How can you bring life to a long-dead car?  We lit the headlights with small LED lights, +Chris Whiting had an LED panel for the interior which he put a warming filter over, and Chris suggested a smoky effect with "el wire".  We tried a few variations, and soon we were getting results like this.  We had limited time on this night to run around and get Milky Way shots before the moon rose, so we didn't quite have time to perfect the concept.  

On each visit we try to introduce a few new concepts as well as continue to perfect old ones we initiated on past trips.  The light is a little bright with the moon down like this, but with the moon up, or more light on the car, we should be able to balance the elements of the scene well.  

I could post-process this twice and decrease the brightness of the blue light in one of the results, then blend the two back together in Photoshop.  I like to do as much as possible in camera though, so I'll probably try this again on our upcoming October 12 visit: http://www.jeffsullivanphotography.com/blog/bodie-night-photography-workshops/ #Bodie   #nightphotography   #workshop  

Ghost tires smoking

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37 thoughts on “Smoking Ghost Tires”

  8. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    Contrasting "warm"/yellow tones and "cool"/blue colors is one of my favorite combinations +Brian Duff.  It's particularly nice when you can get a mixture of the two in the sky, often during evening twilight and "blue hour", when there's still a little diffuse warm light from the sun coming over the horizon.

  11. Andrew Gregor
    Reply

    Holy jeez, I was just here last weekend! I took photos of this very car, in fact! And really great stuff. You guys are quite talented with the light painting. Did you have to sneak in? I know the park "closes" pretty early.

  31. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    What do you mean +Jēkabs Zalte?  It's a single exposure, all done in-camera, so it seems to me that it's about as pure as photography gets these days.  (There shouldn't be any risk of someone labeling it as something else, like a Photoshopped creation more similar to what graphic artists produce.)  It does use the high ISO capability of a digital sensor, but you could reproduce this shot using film pushed to a similar ISO.  (I do appreciate your feedback, thanks.)

  33. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    No need to sneak in +Andrew Gregor, the park has standard fees for night access provided that you ahve a $2M liability policy and first aid training.  Prices start at $600 for the first person (not including the $500-600 insurance policy), but if I get 5-10 people to join me I can bring people in at a cost per person of $325/person: http://www.jeffsullivanphotography.com/blog/bodie-night-photography-workshops/
    It's very cool to be shooting in the park at night, and I like that we're raising money to support building stabilization projects at teh park, so I've intentionally priced my Bodie night access close to cost to be able to go myself as often as possible. 

    By the way, we did see someone trying to sneak in one night.  Had he been caught by one of the rangers, the charge would have been tresspassing, an expensive one to defend in court, with potentially steep penalties.

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