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Old 05-10-2014, 02:00 PM
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CapturingTheNight (Greg)
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Star Dust

Hello all,

Seeing Mikes latest great work featuring the light painted writing (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...d.php?t=126798) reminded me to post a shoot I did about three weeks ago now for an arts project I am currently involved in.
The project is called (We are all made of) Stardust and it is a collaboration between Murray Arts, the local indigenous community, the Astronomical Society of Albury Wodonga and myself. It involves three nights of presentations and star gazing to various local communities and then charcoal drawings will produced inspired by the presentations and star gazing evenings. You can read more about the project here if you wish: http://www.murrayarts.org.au/index.php/charcoal-night-2

We have had two evenings so far with one to go this coming week. On the first night the project director requested that I do an image that they could use in promotional material and send to the organisation that gave them the grant. The idea was to sort of recreate my "Beam Me Up" image (in the above link) that they used in the pre-promotion of the event. So we gave each of the kids there (about 30) a sparkler to wave around in the dark. We split them into groups of about five each and I did a series of long exposures to capture the sparklers lit up. Due to the extreme difference in brightness from the sparklers and the stars I was not able to capture it all in one image (unlike "Beam Me Up" which was done using a small low powered head torch), so once the kids had had their turn I did one exposure for the sky without moving the camera. I then asked one of the kids to have a go at writing the words Star Dust with my red light head torch. It took a couple of goes for her to get the letters the right way round but in the end she did a great job.

So sorry for the long post but here is the finished result.
Click image for larger version

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Canon 6D and 14mm lens. One 30 second exposure at ISO 100 and F/4 for the kids with the sparklers and the foreground. One 30 second exposure at ISO 3200 and F/2.8 for the sky. And two exposures for the words "Star" and then "Dust".

Cheers

Greg
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Old 05-10-2014, 04:02 PM
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Joshua Bunn (Joshua)
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Dramatic effect Greg. Very creative!
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Old 05-10-2014, 09:56 PM
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strongmanmike (Michael)
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Great final result

Quote:
Originally Posted by CapturingTheNight View Post
One 30 second exposure at ISO 100 and F/4 for the kids with the sparklers and the foreground. One 30 second exposure at ISO 3200 and F/2.8 for the sky. And two exposures for the words "Star" and then "Dust".
Aaaah theats Photoshop cheatin man

Actually, could you get this view in a single shot....

Mike
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Old 06-10-2014, 08:20 AM
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CapturingTheNight (Greg)
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Thank you very much Joshua and Mike

Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike View Post
Aaaah theats Photoshop cheatin man

Actually, could you get this view in a single shot....
Yeah I know *hangs head in shame* One of the very few times I have combined exposures. I always try and get it all in one where ever possible unless I am doing a panorama or star trail image for example. Although, apart from moving the writing to where I wanted it in the image this isn't that different from combining exposures in deep sky images where you would take short exposures for the core of a bright nebula and then really long ones for the background faint dust and gas, for example.
If I had of just pasted in the sky from another time and location or even from a different direction in the sky from the one I was shooting here, or worse, stolen someone elses image, then yes that would certainly cross my "photoshop" (and moral) boundary. This is more like a HDR image.

With enough time, practice and planning I think this could still be done in one image but I did not have that luxury at the time with 30 odd people standing around waiting for their turn (after all the whole point of the evening was for all the participants to have an enjoyable and memorable time under the stars- and not have me barking "let's try it again" constantly). The writing and the sky is easily achievable, but the sparklers would need very careful handling not to blow out the image. Something like lighting them off camera, putting a cover over them, taking them out for a brief 1 second twirl and then covering them again, could possibly work. Doing a "magic glove" image where you cover part of the lens for most of the exposure could also work quite well but is fiddly to get exactly right.
If we had small low power torches instead of sparklers, then yeah it would absolutely be possible in one shot.
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Old 08-10-2014, 04:55 PM
dutch2 (Ingrid)
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Beautiful shot, Greg, well done.
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Old 09-10-2014, 11:59 AM
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Nothing to be ashamed about.. or pass moral judgement on . You've declared what you did and it's a great shot that suits the purpose perfectly.

All sorts of artistic approaches are valid. As long as you don't mislead with the images you present in terms of how they were created then anything goes!

Phil
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Old 09-10-2014, 12:37 PM
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strongmanmike (Michael)
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Covering sparklers huh?...sounds fraught with danger

I do recon doing short exposures in deep sky imaging to combine with longer ones is a little different though ...since the scope is tracking the object the whole scene was always in that same relative position all the time for the whole exposure, unchanged, the varying exposures just prevents the bright bits blowing out ie simply overcoming a shortfall in the detector. The final image represents spacially exactly what was in the scopes field of view throughout the exposure.

Thanks for the explanation Greg, cheers

Mike
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