After the exciting results from our first experiment with Stickman Flashlight photography, we decided get a little more ambitious.  I really liked the texture and lighting from the halogen light in the yard on the bondo fenders of that old beatup VW Bug.  So we rolled it out again, setup the camera, and shot away. 

The first shot was just tracing the bug with the flashlight.  The picture is actually three exposures:

• The general lighting from the halogen light on the house to light the yard and the bug.
• Two separate 30 second exposures to trace the car. 

The shutter on my camera is LOUD!  So we knew when to stop and reset the shutter.  Never was able to take any sneak shots with that camera.

But we also wanted to get a Stickman in the picture.  One of the fun things was coming up with seemingly mundane things we do everyday and inserting this surreal stickman into the scene.  So the next picture was to trace the Bug again, but this time to add the Stickman opening the trunk of the car (yeah the trunk is in the front on a VW, gas tank is up there too).  The gas gauge never did work well on that Bug (not mine), so we had a stick that we’d use to check how much gas was in the tank. Helped to push it to gas stations a few times as well…..But I digress. 

So, here is the finished picture…..Which you’ll notice is also the header for the blog. 

Enjoy…

There’s a story behind every picture.  Sometimes they are funny.  Sometimes they are sad.  Sometimes they are mundane.  Sometimes they are made up. 

So what is the story behind the stickman pictures?

Wayback machine - 1985

I was taking a photography class at a community college in Costa Mesa, CA.  My friend and I had discovered this wonderful film (yes film, pre-digtial days) from Kodak called Techpan.  Techpan was a REALLY slow film, but the range of tones was something that we wanted to experiment with.  So we set up my camera (Canon A1) on a monster tripod from the college, and started experimenting.  I thought it would be cool to create a series of pictures with stickmen in them.  Each picture would be a scene or story of sorts. 

So one night we setup my friend’s beat up 1963 VW Bug in the yard of his Dad’s house.  The house had this really bright halogen light that lit up the yard.  We were both dressed in black and equiped with a  flashlight.  Below was our first experiment:

This picture was actually two separate exposures on the same frame of film.  No tricks or special effects.  Shot a photo for the car lit by the bright light on the house.  Then we reset the camera shutter without advancing the film, turned out ALL of the lights around us, and then dressed in black, tripped the shutter again and I traced my friend with the flashlight. 

If you look close, you can see his face in the face of the stickman.  Needless to say, we were excited about the results and started coming up with new pictures, thus the stickman series was born. 

In the coming posts, I’ll reveal the stories behind these pictures and more.  Hope all y’all (plural for y’all in Texan) enjoy them.

For some time now I’ve thought of joining the blogsphere, but just never took the leap.  Then Mom discovered Sis’s blog and conveniently neglected to remember that she wasn’t supposed to tell anybody about it.  Funny how that happens.  When Sis saw that I was interested, she “nominated” me for a a free blog from Incredipete and then bribed enlisted the support of her readers to vote for me in the contest (unbeknownst to me yarn is a real motivator).  It was a very close call, but in the end I won. 

Thanks again everyone at Slowknitter who voted, and to Pete and IHS Web Solutions for the providing site itself. 

Enjoy and comment.