Painting With Light

For the past few weeks we've had a module at college called 'Alternative Techniques', or in simpler terms, 'Light Painting'. This is creative photographs with a long exposure, and essentially "painting" on the image by moving a light source around. By doing this you can create some pretty amazing images…and it really is as fun as it sounds!

For this project i decided to do an advertisement campaign shot for a NIKE sprinting spike, with using an external light source to make it look fancier. Sounds cool, i know. It has to be one of my favourite photo shoots i've done though. You forget about the time, and you just want to keep on painting different shapes, and colours, and trying different lights to see the effects. I was there for at least 4 hours just wiggling a glow stick about.

Well after all that playing (that's what it felt like), i came out with a shot which i really like. I used a snooted flash to capture the shoe, with about a 10 second exposure after when i painted with the light.

Just like with photographing stars, you just need a dark room, a tripod, and a long exposure. Then just start painting with lights! The effect i got was created with a thick yellow glow stick (not the little thin ones, they suck).