Futzing around with a cell phone, a car, and long exposures

[dsiglin]

A few days ago I watched this video



Near the end the photographer shows how to light a car without 60k in lighting equipment using long exposures or multiple shots. Well, I only have one speedlight and I definitely don't have a Lamborghini, just a Mazda 3 hatchback. I do like the aggressive styling of the Mazda so I thought I'd give this a go. I spent an hour on a near pitch black road. This photo was a composite of three photos. It turned out not too shabby.




But the real fun started when I took 20 second exposures while walking around Mazda twice shining my cell phone on it.





Now I wish I had had time to wash the car. Next time I'm going to find a place with absolutely no man made light. At that long of an exposure you can see the light from a very distant street light (greenish tint) which takes away from the rest of the photo. I'm also going to try putting the light source up higher so I can crop it out and see how it looks to have just the light car but no obvious light source to have lit it.