I was really surprised at how many people didn't suspect these shots were double exposures. It was a lot of fun to do and took me to new technical tricks I'd never tried before (the slotted card).
The Entry:
Two Outtakes:
I really wanted to use the first as it sorta looked like I was conjuring fire from my fingers, and I liked the flames on the second (but there were exposure issues with that one I didn't like).
It was a lot of fun to do and took me to new technical tricks I'd never tried before (the slotted card).
The Entry:
Can you elaborate on the slotted card a bit more as I am very interested in this technique. I tried something similar with my ill-fated entry where my wife covered the camera with a black t-shirt while I moved the match:
hey Jason, love your work and its good to see you found a 'safe' way to set fire to yourself. I'm just not into using my brain as much as others so took things a bit too literaly ....
I think this would have scored better then my final entry, simply for the stupidity (oh, and thats another challenge it should have gone in).
No mirrors, double exposures or trickery - this was pure madness but I am recovering.
It was a lot of fun to do and took me to new technical tricks I'd never tried before (the slotted card).
The Entry:
Can you elaborate on the slotted card a bit more as I am very interested in this technique. I tried something similar with my ill-fated entry where my wife covered the camera with a black t-shirt while I moved the match:
The slot technique is an attempt to attain a faster shutter speed than you could just by moving the black matboard yourself.
So a number of my shots use a double exposure technique. They are harder to do in digital because you, naturally, have to keep the shutter open the whole time. With old film bodies, you could expose twice on the same frame of film. That's not legal here in DPC world. So you wind up exposing a shot, covering the lens (with the shutter open), moving whatever needs to be moved, and then exposing the second half.
I used the slot here (which is basically a 1 cm slot cut like a long horizontal rectangle in a black piece of matboard about 15x6 (or whatever) so I could have the first "exposure" be a long faster than the second. I held the black matboard over the lens and opened the shutter. When the fire was behaving, I moved the slot across the lens as fast as I could. The exposure probably was close to 1/100th and allowed me to freeze the flame much more than if I were to try to remove the matboard and replace it entirely. Then, once the slot passed over the lens, I held the board over the lens and moved the fire while putting my hand in for the shot. That exposure was closer to 1 second so I just removed the matboard and replaced it. Voila. After some goofing around to get the best exposure, I had the shot you are looking at.
