# Long exposure composite photography:



## MK3Brent (Sep 27, 2012)

I have been practicing this for a week now, and am just struggling. 
It has been a great exercise in forethought and light temperature planning and remembering. 

I take 20-30 second exposure of separate sections of a subject to give dramatic and depth lighting, and then piece them all back together in photoshop. The results are rather high dynamic range with very intriguing life to the image. 

What I've found to work best for me, is pre planning how I want to light my subject, and just go small pieces at a time. 

So, if you've never tried this... give it a shot. It's a lot of fun. 
Here's one of mine. I've lost a lot of detail in the shadows... it's tricky lighting those areas and blending them later.


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## rexbobcat (Sep 27, 2012)

Does this require long exposure? Couldn't you do the same thing with just different exposures in general?


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## MK3Brent (Sep 27, 2012)

rexbobcat said:


> Does this require long exposure? Couldn't you do the same thing with just different exposures in general?


I guess it depends on how big of a subject you're shooting. The more light you expose on the subject, the more it spills into other areas of the photo. In my case above, if I used a shorter exposure with brighter light, it most likely would be large enough to cover say the front wheel and parts of the front frame. I'm still too new at this to know all the tricks and details, but so far I've found longer exposures with controlled light sources make it way easier. 



See how Eric Curry does them:

http://youtu.be/dylX-1dufGI


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## FolkPhotography (Sep 27, 2012)

Those are wonderful images!!  I love lightpainting.  In fact, I did a lightpainting shoot with a McLaren MP4-12C and a Ferrari F40 just the other night.  Here are two photos from that shoot.

The first one is 5 separate photos (one lighting the driver's side of the white car, one lighting the passenger side of the white car, one lighting the driver's side of the red car, one lighting the passenger side of the red car, and one with no lights to get a clean background with no light trails.)  All lighting was done with the flashlight app on an iPhone.  The second photo is made up of three images, one to light the white car, one to light the red car, and one for a clean background.  Then, I manipulated it in PS to create the illusion of a rig shot.  All images were done at a 30-second exposure at F/9.0 at a 20mm focal length.

High-res #1:  Highlight of the Nightlife | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

High-res #2:  In Pursuit | McLaren MP4-12C & Ferrari F40 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

-Gil


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## rexbobcat (Sep 27, 2012)

Ohh, you're talking about light painting. I thought you were just referring to a long-exposure HDR effect just from normal exposures.


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## MK3Brent (Sep 28, 2012)

Yeah. 20-30s f/8 24mm 2.8 and a small pen light. I think the final combination was about 14 layers in PS with each layer consisting of 3-4 photos.


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## MK3Brent (Sep 29, 2012)

I was able to pull more detail out using a different layer blending style.


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## Buckster (Sep 29, 2012)

I like it overall, but not really crazy about the magenta cast, especially on the tires, tbh.


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## MK3Brent (Sep 29, 2012)

Yeah, I agree. It's from using two light sources that are LED and florescent. I will have to mask those areas differently or change the white balance to match.


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