Man Ray started doing that in about 1924 I believe. Pretty old technique. It's a lot of fun with sparklers and things like that.
When I was about 6 in the mid. 1950's I helped my Dad with a project similar to this. He had an assignment to photograph the inside of the first utility dedicated tunnel under Chicago. He positioned the camera at one end and got everything set up and turned off all the lights. My assignment was to walk down the tunnel with a black cloth over me and pop the old huge Press flash bulbs as I walked down the tunnel to the end.
He'd tell me how many steps to take before popping the next bulb. Fun stuff and that photograph came out beautiful and very evenly lit from one end to the other.
Even Ansel Adams did some work with lightpainting, albeit very subtle, to really capture the lighting of vinyl.
It's fun, and it forces you to consider the accumulation of light on the sensor/film in a new and different way, which comes in handy when you start to use flashes outdoors.
I saw some awesome shots a couple months ago where the photographer used a laser to map rooms and people/surfaces etc. in each image. I will try to find a link to the images. Its not your typical painting with light, but extremely inspirational.
EDIT: look some of these images over, I really want to try this:
http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/08/to … /?pid=3455 Here it doesn't mention where I can quickly find that he used a laser, however I believe I read that somewhere. It says he originally started with LED lights.
UltimateAppeal wrote: I saw some awesome shots a couple months ago where the photographer used a laser to map rooms and people/surfaces etc. in each image. I will try to find a link to the images. Its not your typical painting with light, but extremely inspirational.
You all have any examples where you used a model in the shot? I tried that on a recent shoot and it didn't go to well. I have done light painting in the past that turned out good but at my recent shoot, I wanted the model to hit and hold her pose during the long exposure while i ran behind her with a flashing light and attempted to make all sorts of designs and light patterns then ran back over to the camera and flashed my strobe to put light on the model before the exposure ended and it didn't come out as I saw it in my head.
The longest exposure I had it set for 20 seconds and then I bumped it down to about 8 seconds and it kinda worked but it still wasn't what I had envisioned.
If there are some examples anyone can post where you used a model and perhaps the camera settings you used as well that would be great. I'd like to revisit this on my next shoot.
Most of my best experiences with Light Painting has been with Landscapes. I've tried it with models before, but it is difficult to get someone to sit still enough for long enough. I don't have any of the shots on this computer.
One of the best (even though, still a failure...) was a tattoo shoot, and I only wanted the tats lit. So, I painted them, the shots came out great! Until you saw them on the big monitors. Every tattoo was lit great, the rest of the body fell out into darkness rather slowly, nicely, but every one was blurry. I've also done some neat "double exposure" things where I painted the face, eyes closed, and then just before the shutter closed, had her open her eyes. Real neat effect. I love Light Painting, it just seems to work better for me on things that can't move independently!
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