Started doing a shot of a woody with two strong side-lights on a whim (got a second sigma EF-500 today). I had for some time been struggling to think of how to artistically simulate an aura or beam of light painted effect... i tried pieces of paper with gradiated lighting, all sorts, then it came to me... what's DPC's idea of heaven? A blue ribbon, of course! I quickly put together a rough vector version of the DPC ribbon, worked out how big i wanted it and printed white on black.
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Setup:
Woody on his pedestal, black silk covering his shiny metal pole (but not all of it, as i realised too late). Black cloth background. Printout of the DPC ribbon attached and carefully positioned. Camera on tripod, carrying case from a flash unit over the on-board flash so it could trigger the slaves but not add light to the scene.
Lighting:
Two Sigma EF-500 in optical slave mode, one on either side slightly behind the woody, zoomed to 105mm to give a strong vignette and leave the legs in shadow. Covered on-board flash to trigger, but not add light. Second-curtain sync, mirror lockup, longish exposure so i could paint the woody with light from a blue LED keyring. The logo is lit by the reflections from the woody and painted with the keyring also. Controlling stray blue light was a pain!
Postprocessing:
Slight boost in contrast and brightness to knock out the bottom end, and get rid of all the bits of background that weren't quite black. Square crop. Resize. Tiny tiny miniscule amount of USM.
Outtakes:
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I have to tell you, I am BORED SILLY with these wooden figures, however, your execution in terms of lighting, positioning and use of the background ribbon as a stained glass church window was so well done that I gave it a 10. VERY WELL DONE, and the title is perfect.
Hi Ken. Extremely well done! Woody + Ribbon = 10. ;^) Very, very, creative. Good job of positioning the subject in the frame. Nice job of dramatic lighting.
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