Behind the Photo: Battlestar Galactica

Here is an entry to edition 3 of Behind The Photo contest - @nelyp/behind-the-photo-contest-edition-3

There were a number of pieces of inspiration behind this particular photos, which started with wanting to do an indoor "light painting" photo for some time. I've just not had the inspiration on the particular subject. Recently, however, I finished ~~binging~~ watching season 2 of Lost in Space and was reminded just how fascinated I am by stories that include the vast emptiness of outer space. I suddenly had my inspiration.

"Light Painting" as an exercise involves a dark night, a single light source, and a camera with the bulb feature. The bulb feature essentially allows the shutter to remain open for as long as the photographer desires.

To create a light painting photograph, the photographer first sets up the camera with the correct settings (BULB shutter, very tight aperture, and a low-sensitivity ISO). The camera then needs to be situated stationary (a tripod works great, of course) and the focus focussed. The shutter is then opened and the photographer bathes the subject in a light as if "painting" it. A light source with a very focused beam works best for this. When the "painting" is complete the shutter is closed, picture examined, tweaks made to settings, and performed again, and again, and again, until the right picture is finally obtained.

Set up ISO, Shutter, and F-Stop.
Manually place camera.
Focus. Manually.
Open Shutter.
Paint.
Close Shutter.
Repeat as desired.

For this project, knowing I wanted to represent the vast, cold, darkness of outerspace, I set up a model of the Battlestar Galactica that I have in my lightbox on a black background, like thus:

It's just a small model, and I do not have a flashlight that has a very narrow beam, so I improvised and placed a lightsource right on top of the tent facing down:

I tried "painting" with this particular light as well. The results were not satisfactory, so I'm not showing them, but this is how it would have looked:

I took several photos with multiple settings, and ultimately found that the best settings were about this:

ISO 100
Shutter Speed: Bulb
Aperture: f/36
Exposure time: 13 seconds

I ended up with a dark picture that looked like this:

I looked at that and really, really liked it. That was just about the effect I wanted! One spaceship on it's own, lonely, in the cold of space. But I wasn't sure I wanted it to be quite that dark, so I did some tweaks to levels and ended up with the picture above. By slightly repositioning the lightsource I also ended up with a couple other pictures with slightly different shadowing. My final three favourites:

Viewing them in that order even makes it seem like the ship is passing by a star.

Not bad for a toy!

(design by remyrequinart: @remyrequenart)