Day 35 - Project 365

Once again the plan B box had to be cracked open. Ben texted to say he wasn't going to be able to make it. The first idea that came to mind was Man on Fire. I've yet to play with fire for project 365 and what better day than today. In retrospect a less humid and less windy day would have been better.

However, despite the meteorological issues, I'd say I pulled it off. Since I've been getting more attention, Shawn has been all "gung ho" about being the star of the show. He says at the wrap party he will naturally be the star as he will be in 50% of the photos. That moment is when I decided that I must expand my talent pool. He doesn't need any bigger of a head than he already has. Sometimes I fear that he wont fit in the car on account of his balloon like head!

The minutes the sun set we were off to the back yard to start some fires!

I knew right away that getting this shot all in one attempt was near impossible as Shawn is no where near fireproof and too much of a chicken to at least find out how resistant he is. In light of this setback, I would be forced to capture this shot in multiple elements. Shawn would be the first of nine. Learning my lesson from day 31, I moved from the small cramped back porch to the spacious lush green backyard. We ran power out the window and set up the "sandwich" lighting. Gridded soft boxes at 10 and 2 with beauty dish boomed overhead. We tested and dialed in the lighting within a few shots.

Back in the first week of the project I had made a burnt shirt for a theme that never saw the light of day. However, I was not happy with the red color and the fact that it had a giant Hurley logo across the front. Knowing full well from the previous day that we didn't have a plain white tee. We decided to use an old Gold’s gym shirt inside out. While Shawn took on the fun task of burning holes into the shirt, I recorded the intro for the video.

With shirt burned, the star ready on his mark, we started firing away. I wanted to get an evil grin, signifying he is devilishly happy that he starts fires. Shawn nailed this right out of the gate. It didn't take long before we had the shot in the bag.

From here we start the fires!!

The first fire element would be the fireball in Shawn's hand. I balled up a piece of copier paper, clamped it to a C-stand arm sprayed it with a top secret accelerant and had Shawn light it. I stood back and with the camera on the tripod, fired shot after shot. However, the paper was burning too fast and wasn't creating the effect I was looking for. I wanted a flaming ball not a tame camp fire. I wanted the OMG flaming marshmallow! The Michael Jackson flaming hair! I needed something that would burn longer. I looked around and found an old oily rag, balled it up and sprayed it with the accelerant and lit it. Now this was what I wanted. A nice slow burning flame. Only thing I needed was more "wow". I had Shawn spray the flame and because of the type of "stuff" that was in the can it gave a molten look which in my humble opinion just made it kick so much ass!

We figured that before it got too late we should capture the background flames. These would be the wall of flames you see in the background of the final picture. Earlier I had found a pile of leaves next to the fire pit and figured they would be perfect for burning. In fear of some sort of creepy crawly bitey stingy thing, I used a rake to scoop the leaves into the pit. I noticed a used diaper was also in the pit and figured it would burn nicely! All we needed now is GAS. (PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS AND TELL YOUR MOM YOU READ THIS ON THIS WEBSITE, I will not be happy responding to angry mothers! I've gotten the evil eye from my own mother for years for the things I do. I do not need it from your mom too!) I lightly marinate the leaves in some tasty petro and Shawn lights a scrap of paper and we now have fire (said in the voice from finding Nemo when the blow fish says "Ring of FIRE!") I snap a few shots and am quickly not satisfied with the size of the flames. I pick up the gas can and start pouring some gas on the flame. Now, this is one of those moments where you look back and say… "that was not my brightest moment" The flame traveled up the stream of gas and quickly had me in a panic, trying to extinguish the flame that if left for a few more seconds would have surly ignited the fumes in the can and Day 35 would have been late! That reminds me of a morbid and somewhat mis-timed joke that a friend had told me. We had been talking about death and close calls and he says "what the most commonly heard last words from people? …Hey look what I can do"

After the close call with the gas, I decided to retire from fire starter and just man the camera. Shawn took over and controllably and a little safer managed to get the flames high and looking great. I increased my shutter speed to 1000 and lowered the aperture to f5 and started freezing the flames in action. I was getting visibly giddy at what I was seeing in the preview. I love when a plan comes together! The flames were looking amazing and I had quickly gotten around 50 crisp and beautiful flame shots. All that was left was the smoke.

I brought one light with soft box over to the fire pit and snapped a few pictures of the smoke as I would use this in the very background of the shot to add some much needed atmosphere. I then moved the light onto the porch for some cover from the wind and captured a few smoke pictures by lighting a piece of paper. This was the same thing I did for Day 31. Only problem today was the air was too thick and the smoke just didn't want to travel right. The thick moist air and water vapor would quickly absorb the smoke making more of a cloud and not the stringy long lingering trails that I was after. I called it a wrap after several attempts.

WARNING: Below this is a lot of technical mumbo jumbo. If you have no interest in the post production you can skip down to the end.

Now the editing is where the magic happened today. I imported a total of 9 elements into one file in photoshop. I combined the 3 best flame shots for the background.

Since they were on a black background I was able to use the screen blending mode to knock the black out and see through to the layer below. I added a shot of the foggy smoke for atmosphere under the flames.

From here I inserted Shawn, changed the blending mode to screen which knocked the black out showing the flames but also making him semi transparent. In order to see him and not the flames behind him I added a layer directly below him and painted black over all areas of Shawn, effectively making a silhouette of him.

I then worked on the fireball layer. Changing the blending mode to screen then shrinking the layer down to fit into his hand. I masked out around Shawn's fingers to make it look like the flame was in his hand. I then added a new layer, set the blending mode to multiply and selected an orange color by sampling it from the flames. I then with a soft brush set to 30% opacity, painted the palm of Shawn's hand so that it had an orange glow.

The final steps was the smoke which I again set to screen and positioned by his back arm and right shoulder.

At this point I was nearly satisfied! However, the 4 people sitting behind me (Brian, Letty, Shawn and Erika) all thought it needed something. Only problem was, none of them knew what. Of course leave it up to the artist to take a vague suggestion and turn it into something tangible. I figured it needed more atmosphere and created a new layer, set the foreground color to white and background to black.

I filled the layer with clouds by clicking filter/render/clouds. I then set the mode to screen again and selectively erased areas with a low opacity soft brush. I wanted the flames to show through in certain areas and not in others. This would give depth to the image. Up till this point the image looked flat. My final step was to merge all layers to a new layer by clicking command (ctrl on PC) +alt+shift+E. I then added a high-pass filter by selecting filter/other/high-pass. Set it to 4.7 and hit enter. I changed the blending mode to soft light and lowered the opacity of the layer to around 38%. Adding a little more sharpness and over all gritt, thus competing the picture. Everyone was happy and so was I - Day 35 was complete. Only problem was it was Friday at 11pm. I know the worst time to post is Friday and Saturday night as everyone is out. I always seem to post cool looking pictures at the worst times.

Oh well, I think this is one for the wall! Day 35 - Yeah, I'm a Fire-starter!

Lighting:
AB800 Med gridded soft box 10:00 & 2:00 set at 1/2 power
AB800 Beauty Dish boomed over head 1/16 power

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