<click image to zoom>
This is an example of "painting
with light." There are four light sources in this photo, if you include
the streak of light from the car passing in the background. I set
the 4X5 Speed Graphic with 90mm angulon lens on F 16 after focusing
on the ground glass with the lens fully opened. I then locked the
shutter open. The first light applied to the scene was a powerful
flash about 60 feet away to the left. I was not in the car for this
exposure (I was firing the flash). Most night lighting is point sources,
which can be easily imitated with flash as long as it is fairly far
away from the subject. With the F stop and distance, it took five
flash firings to reach the correct exposure. I hid behind bushes to
give the light some shadows. I then moved to the car with a large
flashlight and hid below the dashboard level in the front seat to
illuminate the weeds and ground to the right of the car just outside
the open door. The estimated exposure for the flashlight was 3 seconds,
so I moved the flashlight back and forth accordingly. The last exposure
was by the map light in the front of the car above the windshield.
I metered this exposure and moved myself slightly during the exposure
to leave a blurred but humanoid image. This wasn't to be a self-portrait.
It's really a photograph of you in the car, you know, you, the reader.
But you didn't show, so I had to stand in.
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