Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Too Much Time On My Hands

Regular readers will know I like to play about with special effects...although there's only so much you can do with a pocket camcorder and an aging copy of Adobe After Effects.

Well, earlier today, I was watching a tutorial for making 'light streaks' in After Effects like in those recent cell-phone ads. Because I was bored to tears and have way too much time on my hands, I wondered if I could do the same thing 'in camera'

So, I took my camera outside where it was almost pitch black, set the self-timer for ten seconds and the shutter to stay open for fifteen seconds.

Then, I set the camera down, pressed the shutter and ran like hell for the horizon, swinging my Sonic Screwdriver (IE, blue flashlight) over my shoulder. I quite like how it turned out:
I'd have shrunk it down a little and cropped it, but I uploaded it on my netbook which doesn't have photoshop on it. This is literally directly from the camera. Not so much a pretty photo as a 'proof of concept'

4 comments:

Kraneia said...

I think you should title this photograph "WHEEEEEE!".

That's like my favoritist word EVAH.

Wheeeeeeeeee.

Wasn't that a song by Styx? Too much time on my hands....Ticking away at my sanity.....Is it any wonder I'm not the president? ;)


Scratch

MC Etcher said...

Very cool! You make it seem easy, when I'm sure it's not!

Paulius said...

Actually, it's REALLY easy. You just set your camera's shutter speed to its longest (mine is 15 seconds), use the self imer so you have ime to get into position before he shuer gets opened...and a really, REALLY dark place to shoot at.

then, you just put the camera on something solid where it's not going to move, press the shutter, run in front of it with your flashlight and do whatever.

The only thing I did differently was use my Sonic Screwdriver...that has a UV light instead of a plain light and that shows up just a little bit better.

Sunny said...

Babe, you seriously need to set up the alternate keyboard. I know the pretty lights and extra keys on this one is WAY cooler- but it's really hard to decipher words when all the "t"s are being dropped.

Just sayin'....