This photo was shot at night during my birthday roadtrip vacation in late October 2015, and taken in the housing development where I grew up in during the early ’90s. This housing development is known as The Village of Olde Hickory, right outside the city of Lancaster. For this shot, I used a vintage telephoto lens, a slow 10-second shutter speed, and an aperture of f/1.8. I placed the two LEGO Space Futuron minifigures on a tree branch in an open field, and during the slow exposure time, I stood behind the minifigures while dangling a flashlight for backlighting. Meanwhile, I would breathe heavily in the cold air to create mist, and lastly, I scattered leaves amongst the mist to cause distortion. Thus, the misty air and refracted light is what creates the warped background for this image.

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The above photo is actually a composite image of three different shots merged together in Adobe Lightroom, in order to utilize the HDR effect.

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This particular photo is one of the final shots prior to being merged with others. I personally think the hard backlighting on the red spaceman looks superior compared to the final HDR image, but I chose the former due to the warped, cloudy background.

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