Lightpainting - Colored Gels

[Joe Copalman]

BAD OMBRE

A lot of the girls I knew in high school and have kept in touch with work as hair colorists, and are constantly posting photos of their work on Facebook.  It seemed like a few years back, this technique called 'ombre,' where one color gradually fades into another, was a big thing.  I've done a bunch of hard-break two-color light-painting shots with gelled strobes or flashlights, taking a lot of inspiration from photographers like Troy Paiva.  But the ombre thing intrigued me as a possible light-painting technique. 

I gave it a shot during the night shoot Keith Charlot hosted at Avra Valley back in 2016, and have mixed feelings about the results.  I was fighting a full moon during this shoot, which meant I had to do a fairly short exposure (70 seconds) to prevent the white moonlight from overwhelming the colored light I was throwing on the aircraft.  The fade/blend section suffers from this, as I deliberately threw less light of both colors there, which led to the moonlight stealing the show there.  The short exposure also left the inside of the winglet on the left side of the image un-lit, which I personally just don't like the look of.  I keep telling myself I'm going to try this again on a moonless night, but I never seem to remember.   

[Brian Corbett]

That's really cool. Pondering how to best do this and trying to relate it to something I know; auto painting. I'll remind you next time we're on a night shoot together, as I'd love to play around with it some!

[Joe Copalman]

I think the trick is to do it on a moonless night with very little ambient light.  The bonus is that the colors would be more vibrant as well because the moonlight wouldn't be washing out any of the colored light I've thrown on the subject while I'm lighting the other part.