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Light Painting

Light painting is currently my biggest photographic passion. Over the years, I’ve struggled with the idea of creating images that others have no doubt captured before. Light painting, for me, is a way to add more of my own artistic imagination to an image, and make it completely unique.

Sometimes that means adding something neon, like graffiti-esque writing or a sword to a nature scene, or showing the movement of dancers with lights strapped to their feet. I’ve even added cool blaster effects to models of giant robots (cuz I’m a giant nerd). There is so much opportunity for creativity with light painting, and I can’t wait to do more of it.

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This shot just may be my favourite. The sky isn’t sharp, and I wasn’t even going for the light-streak effect I got. But after I looked at the shot later, i realized it looked kind of like a conductor, so I named it Cosmic Conductor! (Because alliteration rules). Also, for the record, the model is my fiancee, and yes, we are wearing the same hat.
You see, while the lights and their colours certainly add something purely artistic to the photos, they actually illustrate what the person was doing over several seconds. While the light streaks don’t make the person’s movements obvious exactly, the more you consider them, the more you can deduce from them. In this photo, Derek made two leaping kicks, which you can see as the large, purple loops.
The same premise can be applied to different types of dance, like waving which is done mostly with the arms. So this time we put lights on his hands. Also, to add to the idea that Chris is the one who caused the lights to move in the way they did, I aimed a light on him to freeze his face in its previous position. The Ghostbusters shirt turned out to be a good choice.
Take this shot for example. You see the line of lights that go around the back of the shot? We found that that particular design happens when you have someone moonwalk for you. You can actually see Chris’ shoe move up and down. That, in fact, is what he was doing.
As you may have read in my previous post, this idea is all about showing movement. With these photos, Patrick and I are accomplishing that with some led’s strips placed on his shoes.
Here, we have Derek doing his signature move, while I write ZPlitz over his head, and then light up his body a bit. This is more or less standard light painting.
Here is another way of adding light to add to a photo. I really liked this old tree, and I liked the light from the street in the background, but it needed more, so I used the long shutter to dance around the tree with a pair of lights, and voila, light painting. What do you think of adding this technique to photos?
Here is what I’m talking about. This is one shot, and it is actually of me playing a song. Except, instead of hearing it, you get to see it. Can you guess which song it is? Haha, probably not. I’m actually playing a bit of the Lord of the Rings soundtrack – the one where Frodo is reading in the shire.
Of course this technique isn’t just for musicians and music. It can also be for dancers. Again, I was my own model, which makes things a little more complicated. but here, I’ve attached the lights to my ankles, and bounced my flash to light up a larger area (after cleaning up my room a bit!).
With the first shot as well as this one, I had a ten second shutter, and I had the flash set to go off right at the beginning. That way, I could pose for the shot, and then play after the flash. With just the right lighting, settings and movement, this is what you get.
Pretty cool!


All photos on this site were shot by me, Adam Kveton.