Mark Making with Light...

Group Project

When we were showed examples of the light painting i couldn't wait to try out my own! This project was one of my favourites as I love photography and I feel at home with a camera in my hand. We began by watching a short presentation on light painting and learning the process. I was mesmerised and inspired by some of the artists we were shown. It gave me all sorts of ideas to try. We split off into groups with a camera, tripod and used our phones and a red light from a bicycle. We found a dark room, put the camera on the tripod and began experimenting. A member of our group came up with a great idea to use sharpie pens and sellotape to make different coloured lens to go over out phone torches.

I loved working in a group and throwing ideas around. The end results were really great in camera, however when I put them onto a big screen once the session was over the details on the faces were quite blurred, therefore something to remember for next time is focusing on the face!

The settings we used were ISO 100, shutter speed between 15 and 30 seconds, and aperture at 22. We found we got the best results using these settings for the environment that we were in.

First we tried out dancing with the light, then we tried painting our names.

We moved on swiftly onto drawing round a mannequin and found the best results came from directing the light at the camera without trying to hide it and moving quite fast round the outline of the mannequin.

We worked as a group throwing ideas around to get the best shot and spent quite a bit of time working on getting ourselves with a halo of light around the head using different coloured lights for the face on either side. This worked well and we played with moving the light further away from the face so as not to get the phones in shot.

Who ever was holding the phone had to start at the back of the head so we got the halo effect and I found going as close to the head as possible worked well. Blue and red seemed to be the best colours for the face.

As I said earlier in the post, I feel when I try it again myself I will make sure the focus point is on an eye so the face stays in focus. Also making sure the model is keeping as still as possible.

The below pictures are my final favourites retouched from the group shoot.

Light Painting Artists

After researching into some artists I came across a man named Jan Leonardo.

His work inspired me to try out a technique using wire wool. The picture below was my inspiration.

Jan Leonardo was born in Cuxhaven, Germany in 1970. He is Light Painting Photographer, author and performance designer in artistic photography. Since 2005, painting with light in photographs with long exposure times has been the focus of his artistic work. He only photographs at night and in absolute darkness. Jan Leonardo is one of the leading international specialists in this art. The challenge of being a light art photographer is the design of the picture along with control and choreographed, artificial light.

I really love the way that he captures his environment and movement along with the long exposed lighting. He uses symmetry a lot too which I am really like. The sparks in this photograph look almost like string thats on fire. I love the performance aspect to his work.

Another artist I researched, but wasn't as keen on was Michael Ross.

Michael Ross is an american photographer from Texas. He is well known in the Light Art Photography Artist community and is known all over the world for his work and inventive tools for use in Light Painting Photography. The reason I wasn't as keen on his work was his lack of movement and performance to his pictures. Although they look very technical and inventive, they lack class and can look quite tacky, over processed and staged. There is also far too much going on in his pictures which can leave them looking quite messy and distracting.

Planning my own photoshoot

What to wear?

I am planning to wear dark clothes so I don't show up in the picture as a ghostly semi-glowing blur doing the 'painting', something that won't reflect the light I am using. Also, using old clothes, a hat, gloves and some sunglasses to prevent bits of molten metal causing burns as I plan to do a fire wheel (whirling around a fist-full of burning steel-wool on the end of a length of string).

Picking my location:

The nature of doing a fire wheel require me to be outside, somewhere that's unlikely to start a wildfire. I will pick a dark beach down the road from my house so it enables me to take a long/slow-enough photo that I can draw something before the scene becomes over exposed. There will most likely be some ambient light to allow the background scene to show up in the picture as it can make for a much more interesting shot than just light scribbles suspended in blackness as I found out in the group project. I want to allow for reflections also, so a beach with wet sand I think is perfect.

Equipment needed:

The lens I will use: 15 - 85mm

I plan to do some test shots with a few pieces of fire wool first to see how far my camera will need to be to get the whole picture in along with some scenery.

Camera: Canon 7D

Tripod

For the 'painting': a pack of steel-wool balls, a ball of string, some scissors, a lighter and a whisk.

Framing up my shot:

I will do this first, before I start focusing, because as I found out on the group shot when I zoom in and out to compose my shots, it threw my carefully pre-set focus off which will be my second thing to do. I will remember my composition rules like rule of thirds, and ensure that I'm shooting wide enough to fit in my whole intended light painting.

Focusing:

I was disappointed in the group shots when I uploaded them to the computer as they were all out of focus. Therefore, I will have to pre-focus my camera (using Auto Focus), and then switch it over to Manual Focus to 'lock in' that focus before I start taking shots, because as we found in the group shots in low-light situations, the camera will often struggle to find anything to focus on when we left it to it's own devices. I will have someone with me to help to pre-focus - I will get them to go and stand where I'm intending to do my light painting, and then have them shine a torch at the camera, or I will shine a torch on them to make them visible. Once it's found focus, I will switch it over to MF on the side of the lens.

Camera settings:

I will begin with my shutter speed on 30'' so I have a decent amount of time to draw my painting.

I will try ISO 100-400 and play around with that and the aperture I will set to F22 like in the group shots. I have a feeling I will need to play around with this first with a torch to see what the ambient light is like around. Hopefully on the beach it will be quite dark, especially if I'm facing the sea.

Getting the Fire Wheel:

By putting the handful of steel-wool into a whisk to hold it means that the wool has something to be secured into and then I will tie the whisk onto a length of string, light it, and whirl it around. The metal fibres are so fine, and by whirling it around and around I will force so much air (and thus importantly, oxygen) to rush through it, the combination will be flammable, and the steel wool will burn/oxidize rapidly generating so much heat that it melts into tiny gobs of brightly burning/molten metal which then hurtle outwards from my swinging orbit in a beautiful arc. This is the idea anyway, we will see if it works!

As it turned out, the rain has not stopped since I planned the above shoot, therefore I tried more light painting in the comfort of my own home, dry!

I used my LED poi instead to create some wonderful colour changing effects.