Other than it has to do with a little mini quadcopter I have and that I used to make the light trails for this photo.
That's pretty much the idea I had for the photo. Just wanted to use the little copter for some kind of photo, but didn't really know what that photo may be.
Once the batter was charged, I just went out to the living room and thought about life for a minute or two. I decided, based on my pondering, that the hallway would probably be the ideal place for the light trails of the copter. There's two blue and two red LEDs on the copter, which would be perfect for doing light trails.
On went the 10mm, and I started to figure out what exposure I wanted. The longer the better for light trails, but the more light pollution I'd get from other lights in the house and even from out side...I settled on shooting at f5.6 for 25s at ISO100. This gave me an under exposed hallway full of BEAUTIFUL color, and then some awesome light trails going on.
When I say beautiful color, I mean like rainbow sorbet exploded on the walls. It's full of rich, deep oranges, purples, and golds. I looooove it.
Just happened to work out so well.
I did three exposures with all the doors closed. There was a little cold light leaking in from around the doorways, but most of the light came from the copter. Blue+red=purple. So the hall way was mostly purple with splashes of gold around.
Then Alex came walking down the hall and opened the bathroom door for just a second. Which turned out to be perfect. Just perfect.
I got gold, pure golden, light flooding the hall way. Combined with the purples, the tones created are just amazing. Especially on the floor. It brings out the smooth, yet textured filled wood in this glow.
As far as flying the coper, I did one shot where it was on the ground mostly, one where it was everywhere, and one where it was very close to the far wall and to the camera. These three covered the whole hallway, and gave the most light trails possible.
Editing, was pretty fun :)
I experimented around with Camera Calibration a bit, setting it to Landscape, instead of the standard that the camera imports to Lr as. This setting punched the light trails a bit, and made the colors more vidid as well as upping the contrast a bit. I furthered this by just upping the clarity a bit....just a bit.
Then in Ps, I combined all the layers with the lighten blending mode. But the open doorway shot was taking over everything! Never fear though, layer masks came to the rescue! I first made a black mask, so nothing would come through. Then I started to paint in little areas I wanted. First just around the door, to get that golden light I wanted. Then on the floor in front of the door, then on the wall, then the ceiling. I didn't paint a lot, just little areas that add contrast and color. Little details are what make a photo really pop, so I didn't need to do much.
Here's all the individual photos, so you can see how the process worked.
See you tomorrow!
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