Photo: The Stuccoed House

The Stuccoed House — a lit, yellow home at night, with three ghosts

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 “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.