The setup for this shot was simple, here's the recipe:
- Find a large open dark place. In this case, it was an inner courtyard in Krakow, Poland, at my friend Maja's place. Make sure to place the subject against a background that is far away, and that doesn't have any light sources.
- Place a tripod low to the ground and point it up at the subject so that the flash lit ground doesn't show up on the picture.
- Take a wireless flash and point it at the subject from any angle you wish. In this case Caroline was holding the flash, and was at a 45deg angle to the left of the image. The CRUCIAL part is that I put an incandescent filter on the flash, so that the Sorcerer looks like he's lit by the fire, even though he was lit by a flash.
- Use the lowest ISO setting, then test the flamme's exposure and change the aperture accordingly. The flamme's exposure depends, on the speed of the fire balls and concentration of parafin feeding the fire (which diminishes with time). So either you open the aperture progressively throughout one session (about 5minutes) or have the sorcerer slow down as the fire gets weaker to keep a constant flamme brightness.
- Once a good aperture is set, the flash strength is adjusted to expose the sorcerer properly.
- TIMING: with a proper exposure, the shutter can be adjusted to control the length of the light paths, without affecting the exposure.
- This was the first time I fire danced, but it's not difficult. My cousin Piotr hit the shutter when I was in the right position, then I had 1.3 seconds to make a nice trace. This one was my favorite.
NOTE: Luckily the brightness of the subject is much lower that the brightness of the flammes, which prevents a blurred image to superimpose on the flash lit subject.
Outtakes:
INVOCATION
PYROTECHNICS
FIRE PAINTER
Statistics
Place: 3 out of 373 Avg (all users): 6.8204 Avg (commenters): 7.7813 Avg (participants): 6.5036 Avg (non-participants): 7.0406 Views since voting: 10066 Views during voting: 579 Votes: 334 Comments: 56 Favorites: 43 (view)
Awesome image. I didn't have a chance to comment during the challenge. My sister is a fire dancer, so I'm curious where you took the shot and who the model is. Wonderful capture of the provocativeness of this dance. You've managed to make it almost more appealing frozen in time than it is live.
This is a great idea, executed pretty well. Unlike some of the light painting shots in the challenge that seem not well thought out, very random, this shot looks well planned and compositionally strong. This works well, I'm wondering though if the person were just a little more prominent (not much) in the shot it might be an even stronger presentation? Nice shot.
Ok.. this is just cool. Note quite darkness I suppose considering it's.. fire, but very awesome. Maybe you're a black mage? Anyway, I'd say that the model is not light well enough considering he is in the middle... compared to the very amazing fire.
I like the effect of the fire swirling and the black background..my only complaint is that he might have looked more like a sorcerer with some sort of hood.
This is way cool! I'm not quite sure how you got the person so sharp while he obviously must have been moving? If you didn't on submitting, please share your technique after voting!
Not bad. You've managed to get the person nice and sharp for the conditions. I'd like to have seen a bit more of an artistic swirl. Maybe a letter shape rather than just a figure 8. Easier said than done I'm sure. How many shots did it take you to get the exposure right?
This is a great image. You did an excellent job painting with light. I'm impressed that you managed to get the body as crisp. I'd have used a flash and messed it all up.
The composition is really cool. Very dynamic. 10.
Sorcerer
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