This week's shot was something relatively new for me - light painting. I did something along these lines back in July for my Week 10 shot:  

Week 10

This was used with sparklers and a fun family of 4. Week 49's shot was just me and my favorite thing on two wheels! For this shot I setup my bike in my studio (propping up a bike is not easy...) and rolled down my grey background paper. I used my new flashlight my wife got me for Christmas - it's basically a mini tactical LED flashlight. It has a bunch of modes, SOS, etc. Its pretty cool, small and has a lot of power. The red in the wheels came from my broken but still usable wireless mouse with a laser pointer. Who doesn't love a good laser pointer?!

Camera:
Canon 7d
Sigma 17-50mm(2.8)
30seconds @ F16
ISO 100

Strobist:
Mini LED flashlight
Wireless mouse with laser pointer

Objective: (Jeremy speak):

Light painting is more or less the fundamentals of photography - the ability to capture light or the absence of light. In this case, I used a long exposure of 30 seconds and a bunch of different shots to end up with the final product. Instead of doing a super long Bulb exposure (keeping the shutter open as long as you hold either the shutter or a remote down) I decided to make it a little easier and take a few different pictures and mask them in Photoshop.

I first started with the LED flashlight. I had to modify the light because the throw of light was a little too wide. It was hitting the background a little more than I wanted. So, being the handy guy I am, I found a washer with a small opening and gaffer taped it to the end of the flashlight. Voila, smaller light throw! So I painted the bike in about 3 different sections - Front fork and bars; main down and top tube; and then rear seat stays and seat post.

Then the fun part, the laser! I used the laser to paint the wheels. I wanted some color and contrast to the picture. Just light painting a bike would be nice and all but it certainly needed color! So I turned the mouse on and painted in a circular fashion. And I might add, I did a nice job! It certainly looks awesome with the red in the picture.

Editing: I cropped all of the shots in Lightroom as I had to prop the bike slightly facing uphill. I then sent them into Photoshop for layer masking. That took a little bit of time as figuring out about 6-7 layers is not easy! After masking I tweaked the shot a little more by desaturating the slight blue color balance from the flashlight and giving a little more punch to the red laser light. A little dodging and burning and all done!