This post goes through the difficulties and workarounds we encountered while shooting this project.
The biggest challenge we faced was getting the proper effect we wanted out of the lights. This image above is obviously way over exposed, this is due to the length of time holding the light in one place as well as the brightness coming from the light itself. I still think it's kind of cool, but it wasn't something we felt worthy of submitting for the assignment (or in the portraits sub-tab on this site).
The next thing we tried was having the light in the centre for a shorter amount of time. While it was an improvement in exposure, the light still appeared too bright. We ended up figuring out that the purple gel was letting out more light than the orange gel, so we swapped gels and this was the final result below.
The two yellow streaks of light coming from the "ball of energy" was from the light entering and leaving the frame. While I feel the composition could be better if there was no yellow streaks leaving the "ball", I think it helps give it an unstable look. Like the ball is so powerful that streaks of light are shooting out of it.
Speaking of lights entering and leaving the frame, another example of a challenge was making sure the lights were properly in the shot. In this image below you can see a streak of light completlely covering Danny's eyes.
We wanted to make it look like Danny was moving the light around with his hands. While that sort of is achieved in the image above, we wanted to see his eyes. I started moving the LED light more towards the bottom-right corner of the frame and moved it around in circles longer to make it look more powerful. It actually ended up creating a lens flare and some effects similar to a bokeh (boke-uh) from specks of dirt on the lens. This is the final result below.
Another challenge was the strobe light. I had to compensate for how fast the light was flashing and how it would appear in-frame. Below you can see Danny trying to block a wave of laser fire with his saber.
Obviously this wasn't the intention. I was moving the flashlight way too slowly. In the image below from the first post, I moved the flashlight much faster so it only appeared four times even with the strobe effect and the strokes were longer.
For the sparks effect in another image from the first post, I had to cover the light with my hand so I could move it in-between Danny's hands. Then I removed my hand from the light and immediately moved the light out of frame. While out of frame I re-covered the light with my hand and repeated the process a few times to get the final result below.
In the next post, I will break down the process I went through of enhancing these shots using Adobe Photoshop.