Light Painting
The word photography translates as drawing (or writing) with light:
photo = from the Greek phos meaning light graph = from the Greek graphe meaning writing LIght painting is a photographic technique that is usually performed at night or in a dark space with no direct light. To create the different shapes and objects in the images the photographer introduces different lights during a long exposure photograph. These light elements could be, flash lights, light up toys, mobile phones or anything that emits light. During the long light exposure, using any of thee examples of light emitters, you are able to paint objects, creating different scenes or images. |
Here is a video showing some of the things that can be created through light painting:
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Our first attempts at light painting:
-set #1-
We where also using a flash light so the bodies where visible and we could base our drawings around them, we realised that the flash was to close, contributing to the background not being dark enough so we repositioned the flash so it came from below the person. The rest of the photos show the effectiveness this had on the images. We where then able to focus more on the drawings as we had to move quick before the exposure time was over.
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Some of our first pictures (the first two in the top row) where both more experimental, working out how to properly focus the camera on the subject (which needed improving) and working out the correct aperture and exposure time. For the first two the aperture was too open meaning the background was not completely black therefore the shadow of the subject was shown on the wall, and the shapes drawn where not as affective.
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Daren Person
Daren Pearson is a light painter photographer. He first discovered light painting after seeing an image from Gjon Mili that captured Pablo Picasso creating a light drawing called "Picasso Draws A Centar". You can see in many of Daren Pearson images the influence of Picasso's work, as he uses very similar line drawing techniques. Darren pioneered the light painting technique of spinning a glass prism in front of the camera while shinning light into the lens to create rainbow prismatic circles. Here is some of Daren Pearsons work and a video about how he makes his moving images:
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Harold Edgerton
Harold Edgerton was a professor of electrical engineering at the MIT ( massachusetts institute of technology). Edgertin succeeded in photographing phenomena the where to bright or too dim or moved to quickly or too slowly to be captured with a traditional photograph. His subjects were motors, running water and drops spashing, bats and humming birds in flight, golfers and footballers in motion.
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Here is some of his work and a video about how he made his work:
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Light painting
-set #2-
These where our second set of photos. Here we did both painting with light and strobe photography. These where our most successful set of photographs and the idea's for these photographs where very effective and the lighting of the images where also very effective. My favourite image is the one where my friend bee is pretending to swim in the ocean and I have drawn waves to create this illusion.