Painting with light

[Nomar]

Ok before I say anything let me give credit for this idea to those that it belongs to. Most recently I saw tarcyliu post a pic with light coming from a cell phone. I had thought about it a while ago when I saw another member post a pic where he made a circle of red light with some matches. I can't remember his name but you all may have seen this pic that I am talking about so credit goes to him whoever he is. And credit goes to anyone else that has posted pics where they have captured light trails.

I started out originally wanting to write my name with a red lazer pointer using the longtime exposure settings of my camera-but it only goes up to four seconds and found it hard to try to write legible and quick.

So I almost gave up but then I remembered some movie about Pablo Piccaso where he and a woman are photographed painting faces in the air with the light from some lightbulbs. So I decided to just try to make simple shapes and words.

All I did was turn off the lights in my room and set the LT settings to four seconds and 'painted' on the wall, that my camera was pointed at, with the lazer pointer.

If you don't have one you can use just about anything that emits a light, your cell phone or matches (as those members did) a candle, some Christmas lights. Also turn on your camera and take your remote control and aim it at the camera and push the buttons. If you see the red light your camera is able to capture IR so see if you can use the remote in place of the laser pointer. You could try multiple types of lights at the same time a lazer pointer and the light from your cell phone for example.






I have an idea for something using this idea but I will post it later. I just put this up to see if any members here want to play around with this idea I am curious as to what you guys and gals can 'paint'. So give it a try and lets see what you can come up with.

[mickeybb]

So, do you make the first leg of the H then turn the light off, then turn it back on to make the right leg of the H then off again etc., etc.?

[Nomar]

That's how I did that one. Too be honest that 'Hi' and the face are two pics I just joined them to save space.

[Throughmyeyes]

Cool, I've heard of some people using "sparklers" with a slow shutter speed

[jgreve]

If anyone has the time or inclination to check this out, there is a site called www.photopoints.com (of which I am also a member) that has many very good examples of the painting with light technique, most by a man named Emil Schmidt. I can't directly link to the pics in his gallery, but if you go to the home page and then scroll down to the "photos" tab on the left and click the link "by process" and then click on the "painting with light" category you can view the photos. Pretty neat technique... this guy poses his models and then "paints" them in with a low wattage light bulb...kinda like doing a layer mask in camera. I guess I should put in a disclaimer.... a lot of these are nudes, so if you are easily offended, blah blah blah... but the effect this technique produces is truly unique.

This link might take you directly to the gallery but if not, follow the instructions above...
http://www.photopoints.com/main/phot...enProcessID=39

Also some more examples here: http://www.erickellermanphotography....GHT/index.html

[HSH]

Jack there's a pretty good example of painting with light in Shouchen gallery. He did it with an orange. I tend to do a lot of that with my night shots as it seems I can never get enough light in my house at night for my camera to comfortably take a photo. Here's one I did a little while ago with one of my favorite X-mas decorations.

[trtjazz]

Interesting concept worth further exploration to see what can be done with it.

[mickeybb]

Heidi, How did you achieve this effect?

[sfaust]

I used to play around with light painting awhile ago, but kind of forgot abou ti since. I used to use those million candle power searchlights and paint things like buidlings, cars, etc,. We also used colored gels over them for some interesting effects. I also did this on some commercial jobs done in the studio with flashlights, lasers, etc. Mostly product still shots. It really is fun.

I'll see if I can't dig up some of the 35mm slides from the archives to post.

[HSH]

It's pretty simple Mickey, first I setup my background, which was just a dark blue blanket draped over a chair and put the decoration on top of a box that I draped half the blanket over. I then setup the camera and turned off all the lights. I then lit up the decoration with a flashlight so the camera could focus on the decoration and as soon as it focused I turned the flashlight into my leg. When I heard the shutter I covered the flashlight with my homemade macro flash diffuser to get a smaller beam and then painted the decoration while the camera captured it for 16 seconds. After I had the photo I wanted I applied a few VP filters on 3 layers. On the bottom layer I applied Satin Blue, on the middle layer I applied Flashback at 30% opacity, and on the top layer I applied Reminiscing at 25% opacity.

[Throughmyeyes]

I like the lighting and the textures in this Heidi