THE LIGHT-PAINTING OF THE REAPER MAN

To be honest, this week has somehow passed me by too quickly. It's already Saturday and I still haven't got a single picture for my Sunday post. It's not because of the ideas, I have enough of those. It's that somehow nothing wants to succeed. As I write these lines, an ESP32 driver is being loaded into my Arduino IDE. It's been several years since I loaded a new program into my ORBOMAT. I now have a new PC and need to set it up. It's raining and storming outside. So it's the ideal doomsday atmosphere for my theme. I'm a fan of Terry Pratchett and his Discworld. My favorite book is "REAPER MAN", a wonderful story in which everything is turned upside down. It's exactly this theme that I want to turn into a light painting today. A big task and still 24 hours until publication. Let's get started!

To realize this project, I used my DIY robot called ORBOMAT. The first step was to get my ORBOMAT to paint a grid ORB. Transferring the program was a bit time-consuming, as I first had to find and install the right drivers for the ESP32 built into the ORBOMAT. Unfortunately, my program didn't work the way I wanted it to right away. I repeated the test run many times after each program change until the batteries were empty. That was late in the afternoon. It had stopped raining and I was able to use the battery charging time for a short tour on my racing bike.

Back again, I immediately got to work on the set. I prepared the robot arm on one side with a Ryus Lightworks flashlight and on the opposite side with a battery as a counterweight to the torch. I put a cover on the flashlight, which @lichtkunstfoto kindly made for me on his 3D printer.

The next step was to get myself into the ORB. To do this, I installed a flash with a snoot. For the test image, I squatted on a stool and triggered the flash using a remote control. I took this opportunity to test out the facial expressions and gestures. Death should come as a surprise. For this part of the scene, I dressed in a white shirt and gray trousers. The white is supposed to symbolize innocence. A fine wardrobe also expresses that you don't die in poverty. In terms of color, I naturally had to set myself apart from the black death. By the way, you can see in the picture that the last shirt has no pockets. 😉

At the end of the story, the Reaper Man comes into play. What a play on words! 😂 He is supposed to hold everyone's little world in his hands and decide how much time they have left on earth. My wife Geane kindly took on this role. To create an eerie atmosphere, I used some fog in the scene. The model was illuminated from behind with a NOCTIGON DM11 with a red color filter. From the front, the model was illuminated with a scanner.

After I had tested each setting once, I was able to start with the complete work. It was already after midnight. After all the preparations, Geane and I were highly motivated to get the picture in the can. So we worked through all the sequences described above one after the other. Unfortunately, the ORBOMAT was also exposed during the first attempt. As no elements are eliminated or added afterwards in light painting, I discarded the picture (below). The cover picture shows the second attempt as a preliminary final result.

As always at this point, I show the tools used for light painting. You can see the ORBOMAT at the top of the pictures. The remote control for the flash, scanner, fog machine, NOCTIGON and color filter are ready on the desk (picture below). Outside a black cap to cover the lens between the individual work steps.