A thirty-second exposure of my house at night, with the lights on. Our house has creatively applied stucco that is painted yellow, so it makes an interesting and reflective texture, particularly with the yellowish indoor lights. The ghostly figures are of me standing next to two windows and in the light behind the house; I stood still in each spot for eight seconds to achieve the effect (took four tries). I don’t own a proper tripod, so I used a step-ladder; it does well in a pinch.
For the glowing effect, I used a gaussian-blurred layer with soft-light blending in Adobe Photoshop CS3. Other than that, I added contrast and color, burned the sky, and dodged the ghosts.
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Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 30″, F3.5, 18mm, ISO400, 2008-03-22T22:11:14-04, 20080323-021114rxt
Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as Richard Thripp.
That’s a remarkable photo!
How could I miss this one? How could the inside be so bright? I see someone standing in distance.
Well, it was a 30-second exposure. There are three ghostly figures of me because I stood in each of those spots for eight seconds each during the exposure.