I you look closely you actually can see that the road is a bit darker between the red lights. This is the car!
Great shot. Congratulations on it (2years later) :-)
Geez Danimal, don't jump up and scream "Fake" so quick... use your brains: A dark car reflects little light, and the camera can only see reflected light. Since it is going fast, the time the car body blocks the light that comes reflects off the pavement is very short compared to the exposure time, so the car will simply not be visible.
Look at the photos here //www.lostamerica.com/lostframe.html. These are long exposures and in some of the photos the photograpther walks back and forth in front of the lens several times to fire off different colored flashes, but there is no trace of the photographer.
Byshen... believe me when I say there was a whole lot of ass kissing going on. Even so there was a lot of complaining about the second night. I seriously wanted to get it right but even I couldn't talk her into a third night so I had to settle for what I already had. :)
I had my GF drive down the street while I took the photo. It took several tries over two evenings to get it about half right.
I am amazed that your girlfriend is so supportive and willing to drive the car several times over TWO evenings for you to get the picture right! My wife just says "Are you going to go take weird picture AGAIN!...hurry up, we have things to do!"....it doesn't help having a newborn baby either :O But that's ok...wouldn't trade it for all the tea in China....will get snapping soon!
TechnoShroom you are on a roll! Two 1st place ribbons and one 2nd place ribbon out of the 7 challenges you entered....you've won a ribbon on almost half the challenges you've entered! Very Impressive!
Great Job!
Thank you! I was hoping to see one of your really fancy and creative shots for this challenge. Better get snapping.
Thanks for the kind words everyone. (Well, almost everyone.)
Quite a few of you have asked how this was done. It's just a long exposure, manual settings, and an external flash taken in the evening. I had my GF drive down the street while I took the photo. It took several tries over two evenings to get it about half right. The first night all the exposures were good but the tail lights were all wrong. The just didn't follow the path that I wanted them to. It took a long time for her to come around the very long blocks so she could make another pass. I guess I couldn't adequately express what I wanted so there were many takes that were just garbage.
Before the second evening I drew her a diagram of how I wanted her to drive and at what point she needed to be where. I also got out the walkie talkies that we use when camping so that I could tell her any adjustments that needed to be made while she was in the car. This saved lots of time because I didn't have to take all my stuff to the next block to talk to her and then walk back and set up again. It's an extremely bad idea to stop on this street. It still took a lot of time between shots because the blocks are long and she had to wait for lulls in the traffic before heading out.
Like I said though, it's about half right. The second night I was pretty cavalier with the exposure because I had nailed it the night before so the second night the photos were all underexposed due to different lighting conditions and an accidental turn of the dial that I didn't notice. Also, I would have preferred to have a car at the end of the light streaks as some mentioned but only having one flash made that impossible. The set-up has the camera pointed out toward the street and the flash pointed at the sign at 1/4 power and second curtain. Just enough to light the sign properly but not light up the area around it. The light on the tree is actually her maladjusted right headlight. Something I've been meaning to fix for many months but have just never gotten around to doing. In order to have a car at the end of the lights I would have needed another flash a hundred feet behind the tree and a wireless remote to fire it. The distance of the scene is compressed because of the light telephoto I used.
Originally posted by Rusch24:
I do like the picture but I do not understand how you exposed the image without showing the car? I have taken many of this type of image and always have the watermark of the car. Was this photoshoped at all?
Look more closely, you can see a ghost of the car. It's just not at the end of the lights where one would normally expect to see it. Because the car is dark, it's moving fast, and this was taken late in the evening the car vanishes. Especially when it gets into the distance. There just isn't enough light shining on it to register more than the ground which isn't moving so has had longer to collect light.
Yes, it was "photoshoped" but not in the negative manner that most people imply when they say "photoshoped". I cropped, adjusted the levels to make the image brighter, increased saturation (because I underexposed), pre and post sharpened, and changed the canvas size to create the border. No other editing was done and certainly none that is against the rules or even the spirit of the rules of this site.
Originally posted by Danimal:
Photoshop!
Fake!
Please explain how you did it without Photoshop!
Ask your doctor to up your dose. You're starting to lose it. :)
I do like the picture but I do not understand how you exposed the image without showing the car? I have taken many of this type of image and always have the watermark of the car. Was this photoshoped at all?
TechnoShroom you are on a roll! Two 1st place ribbons and one 2nd place ribbon out of the 7 challenges you entered....you've won a ribbon on almost half the challenges you've entered! Very Impressive!
I am thinking the driver had to be someone you know ;) It was an Iconic image I gave it one of the 38 9th's and thats good from me as only 2-3 get #10's
Just great image. Love the way the red lines mimic the road sign. This is one great capture. Colours are lovely. The star effect is nice. The composition works well. Great photo overall.
Clever idea. Looks like you set this up and it's worth doing.
I'd like to have seen the streaks continue into a vehicle in an ideal world - which you could have done if you'd parked the car at its end point for a few secs and reversed during the rest of the exposure. Could have been dangerous though. ;)
Shot is a bit skewed clockwise, but it's a fun, well observed shot.
A creative idea and excellent realization. Must have been very difficult to get the right balance between exposure time, speed of the car and brightness of daylight. How many attempts did you need to get this result? Well done, good luck for the challenge!
I like the idea very much - mirroring the sign with the light trail is very clever. I think overall composition is a little weak and there are too many distracting items in the background. A similar idea on a less cluttered patch of road would have been even stronger.
Would like it better with a car in the photo. Almost perfect. Still, the best in the challenge, second to my Giant Lollipop, of course :)
I give you 9. I will change it to a 10 if you can add the car before the voting ends...
Terrific continuity with the road lighting and sign curves. Nice to have the stars in some of the street lighting and it's also what I think is a perfectly exposed image. 10
Slippery
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