Medieval Barbecue

Out shopping, I came across a toy dragon. I thought it looked cool, so it went into the cart. As I continued shopping, I imagined it breathing fire at a small animal - I liked the cow, so got that as well.

As I imagined the final shot, I began building the scene around it - fire, ashes, bricky type building, etc.



I realized the fireplace would be perfect!! It's a safe place to light fires, and it has bricks in it as well - bonus!!! Also, to allow the dragon to breathe fire, I needed a long exposure (several seconds) and the fireplace is kind of dark and it's inside the home, so late night shooting wouldn't be a problem.

Here are the items used - the dragon, the cow, and the BBQ lighter used for the fires.





The shot, and its location (in the fireplace) dictated certain parameters:

• The exposure had to be "long".  I would shoot in bulb mode, so that the lighting could take as long as needed.
• Due to shooting at the back of the fireplace, there wasn't space to set up the flashes - on the sides, in the back, etc.  I would have to light it just from the front.
• Because of the time it would take to light the side fires and paint the dragon's breath, I decided to light the rest of the scene with a flash instead of light-painting with a flashlight - more power quicker.
• I snooted the flash to get more control over the beam of light.  I could then fire the flash at several different angles.

I chose f/20 for the aperture, and it ended up being a 30 second shot.

Each attempt at this shot consisted of five steps:

1. Light the paper towels around the scene
2. Start the exposure
3. Wave the lit BBQ lighter from the dragon to the cow
4. Fire the hand-held flash several times from different angles to light the cow and the dragon
5. End the exposure

It took me 5 tries to get the final result. One of the things I learnt was that I had to start the lighter in front of the dragon's mouth, otherwise I captured the streak of fire getting to the dragon as well.

Below is a video I took of the process. The quality is pretty bad, but I think it shows the process decently well.  I put a zap where I started the exposure.  I think that this is of a different attempt that didn't make the cut.

Equipment:

• 40D Camera with wired remote trigger
• Gorillapod on guitar - my cheap reasonably priced tripod could not be lowered to the level I needed
• 430 EX flash - with a home-made cardboard snoot
• Paper towels for side fires