Teddy Transforms into?

Ok, Enough of the water and fire, tonight it was all about Shadows, who notices their shadows as you walk down a road, I play a game with my kids trying to jump on each others shadows, So i was tempted to try play with shadows in a somewhat creative way.

Here is Teddy who really thinks he is a big bird!

Looking at the image you may think i've taken 2 photo's and merged them together, but you may VERY be surprised to know this is a single exposure taken in monochrome mode on my camera.
I may have a high spec DSLR , but any camera that allows you to set the exposure time to 10 seconds can replicate this.

How? is it really possible ?you may ask, Well the simple answer is yes it is. and surprisingly it's very easy to do.

For the photo I had 2 items , a bird and a bear, they are roughly 2 to 3 inches high.

I used a piece of black plastic as the base and propped a white piece of polystyrene as the background about 10 inches behind.

Again using manual focus (think it's my focus method of the month) i placed the bear to the bottom right corner of the frame.

Dialing in F16, 10 second exposure, and ISO 250 i then placed the bird just outside the frame.

Now the important bit, it needs to be pitch black for this to work so I Switched off all the lights and then switched them back on again until I had a torch ready.(important to have all equipment ready)  I used a single LED torch for this, So now i was able to see what i was doing i switched off the lights and moved behind the camera.

I used the torch to try to line up a shadow of the bird to fill the rest of the frame.
then i pressed the shutter and held the torch as steady as i could for for 7 or so seconds and then for the last few seconds of the exposure i just moved the torch back and forward on the foreground.

Then Tada!

looked to the display and i had the bear illuminated with the bird in a shadow! on my first attempt too! I did try a few other ideas, but liked this one the best! although i have a few more creative ideas to try but with the kids sound asleep I couldn't go and raid their toyboxes.

My only criticism is that perhaps the torch on a tripod may have given a sharper shadow, but then, i wouldn't have been able to get the foreground lit! and who ever sees a really sharp shadow anyway!

So there you go, simple setup and quite a dramatic effect.

Depending on your camera you may have to change the ISO or length of exposure, but generally 2/3rd of the exposure time should be on the shadow and the remainder lighting up the subject!

I hope you have fun with this one,