Kim Ballinger - Night Prowler

 

For this project I took a photo of me outside so there would be a soft  outline of the trees to create a non-distractive background that is outdoors and not restrictive, giving the feeling of being free. This created an environment with the night sky serving as a very subtle backdrop giving focus to the colors and lights. 

I used two lights, one red and one white. I photographed and played with various movements of the lights and settled on the ones that I liked the most. I then paired them together with numerous color filters creating a colorful display of movement and light.

The initial picture I took of me is with the red light and aimed towards myself slightly to create a cast off light onto my face and clothes. I ultimately decided to adjust it to a turquoise blue because I felt it fit the final composite better.

I wanted to present the idea of having something in the palm of your hand and being in control of it. As if you created it, it's yours, and only you decide what it does or what it means. The colors are moving fast but yet somehow soothing. Although they are vivid in comparison to the dark background, they work together to create an overall atmosphere of feeling transfixed to the motion.

Ashley Dinning - Night Prowler

 

My concept for this project was to create a haunted Halloween village using some of the decorations I have that I typically use for Halloween. I took photos of each part of the village separately to allow for more freedom in composition. I also incorporated candles shaped like pumpkins to match the other pumpkins in the project. For the three main pumpkins, I used light-up plastic jack-o'-lanterns. I wanted the lights in the sky to resemble the Northern Lights, so I used glowsticks to create different effects in the sky. All of these photographs were taken by me.

Night Prowler - Jennie Keophaphone

 

My concept for this project was to take all my photos at the airport overlook in Charlotte. I wanted to experiment with a lot of the light sources I found there such at light posts, planes, and the view of the airport and incorporated those into this composition. I took all these photos separately at different exposures and depth of fields to have more flexibility in the final outcome. While capturing my photos, I wanted to keep in mind the idea or movement and warmth while also making something vaguely nostalgic, as the airport overlook was a place I went to a lot as a kid. To push the idea of movement and warmth, I asked my friend more help to flick a lighter and overlapped another image of that to make it more dynamic. As I felt that the light behind the plane, almost looked like a sparked lighter. I also had her use a flash light and circle around in different ways to create the light trail in the background. Additionally, while capturing my photos I used a high ISO for my camera settings as I was taking pictures in the dark resulting in a grainier look in some of my images. So I decided to push that look even further and did a layer mask of one of the grainiest pictures I had over the entire composition. Which I also felt like created another element of subtle movement when looked at up close. All photographs were taken by me, no generative AI was used.

Nightprowler -- Meg Neal

For my project I wanted to create a dreamscape out of a mundane everyday task. I chose dishwashing as I have a large metal kitchen sink, that I thought would reflect the lights well. I filled the sink with various dishes (cups, silverware, etc), plastic gloves both empty and filled with water, waterproof color changing LEDS and glow sticks. I turned off any overhead lights and took photos of this including long exposure of water running into the sink and put my phone into a plastic bag to get some underwater shots. I then used a long string of glow sticks and took photos of it while i moved it around to create swirls and loops of color.  I sorted through the photos and combined a choice few of them to make the final product. I positioned the gloves to make it look like hands washing dishes in water, but also kept the composition somewhat abstract to make it seem dreamlike. 

 

Night Prowler - Emily Buie

    Love Tower was created in my aunts field in Denver, NC with four of my family members and some glow sticks. At first I was just experimenting with them running in the field and seeing how my camera did with the exposures, however it didn't seem to have much of a concept. Eventually my dad starting doing circles back to back in the same motion and I got the most wonderful, crisp shape in one shot. Once I learned about that technique I tried to get the lights to create words, however it was too much movement for my camera, so I recommended them doing hearts. None of the shots had all four of them doing a complete heart, but with the multiple photos I took I was able to combine about 6 different images to create the four hearts. The photos of them running around the field eventually came in handy for the background lights and making the composition more interesting. Out of all of the glow sticks (9) my dad was the only one to have a green one, and he only had one, so instead of making a heart he just kind of ran around the whole time, which is where the green rings and trail to the energy tower come from. Being this was my family the hearts are a symbol of love, and it is being illuminated strongly through light and energy. 

Night Prowler - Ashley Legassie

 

My concept for this composition was to create the faces of pumpkins using light. Originally, I tried sparklers to make the facial features but it wasn't quite there. For the final composition, I used a glow ring that flashed blue and red. I also used the glow ring to make the lines of the light around the pumpkins to create movement. I used many blending modes and adjustment layers to make the coloring more consistent. All images I took and I didn't use any generative AI. 

Night Prowler - Liz Garcia

For this project, I wanted to explore using different colored lights and light reflections on my dark brown (technically considered red) Doberman. Considering the fact that he's super photogenic (yes, my opinion is biased) shooting this was probably the most fun I've had with any project in this class. I also loved how the use of a color-changing wand created so many shadows and highlights on his face. I explored layering images over one another and playing with different blending modes to push forward the narrative of movement. Dobermans are very high-energy breeds and mine is no exception to that, he has the goofiest personality and is always funny and fun to be around, so I knew from the start that I wanted to make my composite a very fun and dynamic one. I also played a lot with the saturation of each individual layer to see how bright I could get those colors from my original images to transform them to either be brighter or to tone down the color so as to not overpower the other colors on the image. My biggest struggle with this project was getting my model to stay still long enough for me to be able to get a clear image of him in the dark since he is already a pretty dark dog, after copious amounts of cheese and turkey bribing I was able to get the best shots. I also played with a couple different exposures on my phone to get the best or most dynamic images possible, this was also a little bit of a struggle for me personally, using my phone to shoot all of my images. I shot all of my images between the hours of 6 and 9 pm in my kitchen and used my phone mounted on a tripod. 

 

Ashton Lucas - Night Prowler

For this project I wanted to explore the creepy aspects that come with light painting and create a horror themed piece, since halloween is coming up it inspired me to want to experiment with some spooky themed styles. I wanted to give the viewer the since of an eerie and ghoulish aesthetic, I played around with the color of green, mainly represented when topics are ghost or ghoul based. For the scene I took photos in uptown Charlotte in a alley way, since the setting was halloween based, I figured a alley way would have great background uses. For my light paintings I played around with a lot of twirls which I used around me to capture the essence of a ghostly aura. I also played with straight clean lines, I used those in the mouth part of the piece to give the feeling of me being possessed. 

 

Adult Swim - Hunter Iler

 

For my project, I was staying in Florida and decided to take my pictures here. I wanted this beautiful pool to be the main focus and thought I could make a neon pool party after hours. I took multiple photos of the pool in different exposures to find the perfect lighting for my setting and touched up my favorite photo in Photoshop. The rest of the photos came from experimenting with a flashlight and long-exposure photo techniques. I drew many definitive objects such as the moon, stars, fish, and jellyfish. Along with random shapes and streaks to enhance the existing lights around the pool. Finally, I put two 'light dancers' on either side of the pool to complete the composition I was going for. In terms of editing, I wanted to eliminate any artificial lighting coming in from the street, for this, I used a combination of the remove tool and the clone tool. Then, I used generative ai within Photoshop to generate a sky of stars to better fit the ones I created. Lastly, I touched up some lighting and opacity settings to set everything within the scene.

Aliyah Valcin- Light Angel

During the photo process, I thought of creating a portrait-style long exposure. With this in mind, I shot various photos indoors to reduce outside lighting and focus more on the subject. When experimenting with a range of lights and long exposure settings I noticed that when I would attempt to make circles it would come out looking like wings. The lighting I used extended outward like a fan and would create a wide range of light in my long exposure images. This is where I got the idea to make the subject look like an angel. Using the tripod and long exposure settings helped me to create light streaks which I used to create the circle halo where I took the same exposure shot and layered them together. To make the light angel more convincing I added more dramatic light on the figure to emphasize the pureness and angelic effect. I chose to be the subject of my work with the use of the tripod and used different color lighting to use in my design, as well as duplicating exposure that I felt worked well with my composition. To create the illusion of motion in the wings, I added an image of a long exposure circle.

Cassie Eberle - Night Prowler

For this project, I knew I wanted to play with a multi-colored led flood light that I have for photo shoots. My hope was to evoke a feeling of chaos, discomfort, and maybe a little fear with the motion shots and lights and shadows. I also know that the outcome of this project was heavily influenced by my in class assignment related to the sparklers, where I chose to add a lot of color and contrast to the piece. I wanted to do the same here, but add more layered effects to add depth and to help merge some of the facial features together to give the illusion of multiple faces joining together to create one creature. I was my own subject as the portrait and used different color lighting to create different colors and shadows, as well as different movements and timings to create different visual effects of the movement blurred across the photos. 

Sara Aftimos- Night Prowler

For this project, I really wanted to explore more of the city of Charlotte. I started with the light rail where I wanted to capture the motion that the rail created when in movement. As I continued walking through the city I captured tons of pictures of cool buildings with bright lights. The overall concept I wanted to create was the overwhelming sense of movement, and how things move so fast in our lives. After taking multiple photos of the light rail, I decided that this would be the main focus of my project, to show how we all go to different places and think of multiple things with the constant movement of everything around us. With all the sense of light within my piece from the long exposure, it can be seen how many things surround us every day. While combining my photos, I added color to the light rail, to add more contrast within the piece. As the other images are pretty neutral I included the blue to make the light rail stand out and make it the first thing you see when viewing.

Fairy Dust - Miranda Santana

 

 

For this project I wanted to explore more costuming and prop work as a major component of my work. My primary idea centered around installing lights into a petticoat and capturing the movement of the fabric with the attached lights. This was a LOT of work and I cannot recommend it to anyone that doesn't enjoy sewing; The hem of the petticoat was nearly 50ft around. I also sewed the rest of the outfit (top skirt, sleeves, corset) to create the finished fairy look.
I wanted to create the illusion of movement, so I set a scene of a fairy hanging out on some old stairs in the woods and then noticing the camera. I photographed multiple poses on different points of the staircase, as well as long exposures of me going up and down the stairs to create "fairy dust" trails made from the lights in the skirt. I used a modified light toy from Walmart to draw the wings. I used gen-AI to remove the houses from the background and add additional foliage to make the scene more forest-like. I also used it to correct the shape of my smile since I did not have time to reapply the makeup and take better pictures. Also to this end I tried to utilize the accidental over-exposure on the face to look like an intentional part of the image and added a rainbow overlay.

Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo - Ximena Alvarado (Night Prowler)

 

The idea behind the concept was to play around with the magical aspect in fairytales, such as in Cinderella. Within the dress scene, when she is changing dresses there is a magical element that takes place, and I wanted to play around with that concept. Within my image, I wanted to create the idea of me spinning with the lights going around the dress. I took a original image of me and used AI to help create the spinning half of the dress. With the lights I used glow sticks and had them go in a circle. Through Photoshop, I create multiple layers of the glow stick images and played around with the blending modes to help them blend in. I also used AI to help some of the areas blend into the background and the dress. 

Teleporter - Bryce Locaylocay

 

The concept of this project was to create a teleporter effect using low exposure images and photo manipulation. The inspiration for this project comes from Doctor Strange’s sling ring, which he uses to teleport anywhere he can imagine. I wanted to capture that sense of adventure and the idea of jumping between different locations. The idea is to show me coming out of a wall, suggesting that I’m stepping into a different place. Initially, I aimed for something more abstract, but after several setbacks, I chose this approach because it felt more achievable. This way, I could still capture the essence of teleportation while working with low exposure imagery. All of the original photos were taken outside in my backyard using a laser pointer bought from Amazon a while back. This setting allowed me to experiment with various angles and laser "effects", making it a perfect backdrop for the teleporter effect. Using familiar surroundings made the project feel more personal and gave me the freedom to create the illusion of moving to another place. 

Album Cover—Pablo Villanueva

In creating my rap album cover, I drew inspiration from iconic album covers by Lil Wayne, Playboi Carti, and Chance the Rapper. I admired the way these artists used bold aesthetics to convey their unique sounds, and I wanted to capture that same essence in my project. My neighbor became the perfect subject for the cover, and we went for an aesthetic that combined a vibrant red touch with a dark, secluded look as he walked through the woods. The contrast of the red with the shadowy environment created a striking visual that complemented the mood I was aiming for.

To emphasize this atmosphere, I experimented with light techniques, using my iPhone’s exposure to create smooth, vibrant white strokes that added depth and energy to the composition. These light strokes brought a dynamic quality to the cover, making it feel alive and in motion. By layering the strokes in just the right places, I could draw focus to key areas while maintaining the dark, moody vibe of the setting. This project not only allowed me to explore different visual styles but also gave me a deeper appreciation for the art of album cover design, encouraging me to delve further into this creative field.

Fake It—Pablo Villanueva

 In my digital compositing project titled "Fake It," I’ve imagined a casual afternoon spent inside Michael Jackson’s home. We’re sitting together in a cozy living room, enjoying fresh watermelon and a spread of tasty snacks. As we talk about life and what he’s been up to while staying out of the public eye, I spot him using an iPhone 16. It’s such a funny contrast to his iconic image, and it makes the scene feel even more real. The playful cats that wander around the room add to the warmth and charm of our gathering, showing another side of Michael that fans might not usually see.

Throughout the compositing process, I worked hard to create a cohesive look by softening the quality of different elements. The sleek iPhone needed to blend into the homey vibe, so I distressed its appearance a bit to make it feel less out of place. The cats, depicted in a playful style, help enhance the intimate atmosphere of the scene. I focused on balancing colors and textures to create a dreamlike feel, aiming to capture the essence of a relaxed moment with a music legend, inviting viewers to step into this imaginative interaction.

Sources:

1. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/890094313849458768/

2. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/apple-iphone-16-and-google-pixel-9-base-model-features-specs-and-everything-you-need-to-know/article68629019.ece