Painting with light?

[Bacchus]

Hello @ all,

hm well, we have some sort of competition running between some friends...

i wanted to see/hear your ideas about the theme?

apart the long exposure shots of cars passing I have no ideas...

any comments are welcome

cheers Bacchus

[matthew_h]

You could set the camera up on a tripod in the dark but pointing at a subject.

Fire the camera on a long exposure and then you could use a torch to paint in bits of the subject.

If you see what I mean

[mr noble]

We've all seen this before. Its my first aand so far only attempt at it.

Midnight in my parents local grave yard. Cam on pod at floor height. Bulb exposere and a normal little torch painted over the whole thing making sure not to put your own shaddow in the frame.

Just gutted I missed the underside laft of it! Could fix it in PS I guess.

Greg

[graham@edinburgh]

Friend of mine did a brilliant set of boot laces in light. Total darkness, narrow aperture, couple of nd filters and a long exposure pointing at a pair of laceless boots. Then with a mini maglite he "drew" in the laces with the torch bulb.

I'm desperately trying to find a copy of the pic as it makes much more sense when you see it.

Edited by graham@edinburgh on Tuesday 16th January 10:31

[aspender]

This one caught my eye on flickr. A similar technique (using sparklers) is shown in Night and Low Light Photography by Lee Frost.

ETA: and one effort of mine, though I suspect you've taken down the Christmas tree by now

Edited by aspender on Tuesday 16th January 11:51

[Bacchus]

Thanks you guys for the replies!!

graham@edinburgh said:

I'm desperately trying to find a copy of the pic as it makes much more sense when you see it.

great idea! maybe you find the pictures!

aspender said:

This one caught my eye on flickr.

that's really interesting, do you think I could do the same thing with a torch? as I don't have a neon light...

I searched the internet .. and found this one, which I really like,



@ Matthew : So if I'm right I could do the same, like you explained it?

cheers Bacchus

[gregorio!]

There's an article on painting light in this months 'digital photo' magazine which gives some good insight into the subject.

[gregorio!]

mr noble said:

thats great !

[rhubarb]

Another way with more random effects is to set your camera to 10 second exposure, then throw it in the air (spinning preferably), making sure you catch it on the way down. Works really well with Christmas tree lights and stuff like that, produces rather abstract images. I'll post one or two tonight. I used an old sony digital camera rather than my Nikon though - they didn't call me butter fingers mcgarry at school for nothing !!

[bramley]

I did some interesting ones on a beach in Devon using two flash guns off camera and a 30 sec exposure.

One was a person (me!) standing in one position (almost total darkness) and flashing the top half of my body, then turning 90 degrees and flashing top half again, then stepping away and repeating within the 30s exposure. Produced quite a spooky pic.

Second involved making two footprints in the sand, and standing still in them, and flashing my lower half in the first bit of the exposure, then me jumping aside and my mate standing in my footprints and flashing his upper half.

Third involved running along the shoreline firing the flash gun every second or so for 30 seconds at the waves as they lapped the shore. That gave a nice deep blue sky and a cool effect on the water at the shore.

One bit of advice, don't let the camera 'see' the light source, i.e. make sure your torch/flash gun/whatever is hidden from the camera or blocked by an object (i.e. you).

Great fun...once you start you realise the possibilities are endless.

[cossiemetro]

we need picture's love the gravestone and foot prints

Edited by cossiemetro on Tuesday 16th January 18:03

[Bacchus]

sounds interesting! We need pictures!

[graham@edinburgh]

Haven't found it but here's something I did find that might inspire (although there's some crap in there too )

www.flickr.com/groups/technique/discuss/7362/

[GetCarter]

great pic Mr Noble.

[windandwave]

Not really painting with light - but a spinning novelty light thingamajig shot at a slow speed.

Edited by windandwave on Tuesday 16th January 19:57

[cossiemetro]

had a quick play with a maglight on my wall 5 sec exposure very effective could have some good graveyard pics spooky!!!

[poah]

contains nudity

http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/37

and if you want to look smart like www.mcaleavy.org/

http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/28

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/50

[graham@edinburgh]

By the way, Pablo Picasso used to experiment with light and cameras like this.

[TonyHetherington]

poah said:

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/50

So how would that one have been done? I can't work it out - if a long exposure was used, surely the model would be blurry from the little movement she would (ultimately) have made?!

[graham@edinburgh]

Lights off in the middle of the exposure or a card in front of the lens (probably the former)