Making a Commanding Wallpaper

Photo of the Day

This morning I thought that I would share this photo that I took yesterday while messing around a bit. I have been intrigued with the idea of light painting since I saw a couple of Dave Black videos on Kelby Training a couple of weeks ago. I tried some things outside, and liked what I learned. I will have to try some of this in Colorado with a great backdrop. After watching him light up a still life scene I decided to try and do something that I could use as a wallpaper. When I was back in LaPorte a week ago I brought some of my baseball equipment home so that I could do this. This project evolved from just the ball, mitt, and bat to what you see here. At some point I realized that if I made this about my favorite childhood player that I would have some more things to use. I like the way that it turned out, and I will have to try this a little more. I like the idea of making wallpapers like this. Carlton Fisk hasn’t played baseball in twenty years this season, but I like the idea of having this wallpaper.

Technical Data

The fun thing here is that in all of my attempts at this I never made the same scene twice. I had the room dark except for a little light spilling in from the next room. My camera was set with a 30 second exposure so that I had some time to paint. When I started the exposure I basically used my flashlight to paint light into the scene. Every attempt was different as I never repeated the same pattern. In the spirit of full disclosure I should mention that I used a little kids Tinkerbell flashlight to paint the scene. I had a few of my own, but I liked the yellowish light that the Tinkerbell flashlight spilled onto the scene. I small kids sock as well to diffuse the light coming off of the flashlight. That combination really seemed to be what I was looking for. I would like to set up a couple of other scenes like this with different sports in mind. I will have to bring some more props home next time I go up there. After I had a few pictures made from the scene I uploaded the pictures into Lightroom. I did use the light sports preset here, but that was to sharpen as well as give the picture the vignette that I usually get rid of. From there the picture was exported to WordPress so that I could post this image.