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It’s been three weeks since @Pauly999 contributed to the group and got his image as the group avatar. I updated the avatar again with one of my light paintings that will hopefully inspire some of you to start shooting light painting ideas.
If anyone has questions or are having problems please let me know and I will do what I can to help.@pauly999 gets to have one of his light painting shots to be the new Light Painting group avatar for the next couple of weeks. Thanks for helping contribute to the group by posting your images and comments!
You all should hear some of the crap at fine art showings and galleries that I hear! It’s enough to make even my laid back blood boil sometimes! I’m fortunate enough to have a large arts community where I live and have some crazy stories.
One of my favorites was at a gallery show of my work a lady came up and after finding out I was the artist told me anyone can take a picture. I welcomed her to go out and have a ball with it and even offered to give her some tips. She walked away still bitching and me doing my best not to laugh!
Anyone who goes pro with photography or any art (I paint too) is going to learn really fast to get a thick hide and laugh all the way to the bank as the grumpy trolls out there just get high blood pressure.You all should hear some of the crap at fine art showings and galleries that I hear! It’s enough to make even my laid back blood boil sometimes! I’m fortunate enough to have a large arts community where I live and have some crazy stories.
One of my favorites was at a gallery show of my work a lady came up and after finding out I was the artist told me anyone can take a picture. I welcomed her to go out and have a ball with it and even offered to give her some tips. She walked away still bitching and me doing my best not to laugh!
Anyone who goes pro with photography or any art (I paint too) is going to learn really fast to get a thick hide and laugh all the way to the bank as the grumpy trolls out there just get high blood pressure.Simple, I made a much larger kaleidoscope that would fit my lens. I spent some time learning how to make one myself and have been playing around with different things with it. My main goal with it is to use it with some light painting although the applications for other types of photography are easy to see. I could write up a guide on how to make one and use it if there’s an interest?
Keeping this topic going!
This one is from one of my local cemeteries that’s full of beautiful Victorian monuments.Keeping this topic going!
This one is from one of my local cemeteries that’s full of beautiful Victorian monuments.Sure, go ahead, It might bring in some more people interested in light painting. 🙂
If you’re going to put this on the front page then I would like to give credit where credit is due:
Thanks to Trevor Williams for the two printer sheet stencil creation idea. Keep inspiring and light painting!
The creation of the light box can be attributed to a lot of people with creative minds and the ingenuity to make something for themselves instead of buying it.
The original stalking cat image which I modified for the example stencil (Light Stalking) was found on vinyl-decals.com. I’m not sure who the creating artist is. The other stencil is a crop circle drawing that can be found on a lot of sites.Thanks!
I agree, that’s why I haven’t done it too. Tossing around a few thousand dollars worth of camera body and lens doesn’t seem very wise to me. I do subject my cameras to some pretty hard conditions like caves and such but I take every precaution I can to protect them. I do have an old point and shoot that I might try it out with sometime.
Yeah! It is fun isn’t it? It looks like the first one was from a moving object like a car or walking, the second from handheld camera with a light, and the third at a moving vehicle to me. Am I close? I have made it a habit to try to figure out how others create images so I can learn myself, it’s a good practice.
Keep it up, playing around and having fun like this is a great way to learn!
There’s one technique called camera tossing that you can get some crazy cool results from although I’ve never tried it.
Next time you get out at night with your camera without a tripod try using objects around you as a tripod for long exposures. A park bench, railing, or any non-moving object directed at lights that are moving can give you some interesting results.@mopho – Your welcome, it was my pleasure. On the no off camera flash problem I’m not sure as I’ve never tried it. I think with a steady hand and a bright light it should work but the light source will need to be pretty bright to compare to a flash. The trick is going to be keeping a steady hand if you try it this way because any movement with a constant light source is going to translate over to your image. That may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you want to achieve with it.
A steady hand should get you similar results as my test images on the guide. An unsteady hand and you will get blurring and the stencil won’t be crisp and sharp. If you put a constant light source to it and painted with it it’s going to get some interesting results as the light will streak in the image and end up with the stencil image at the end when you turn the light off. I think that could be potentially pretty good as it gives an unexpected result from the standard light stencil image. How about you try it out and I will try it out on my end too and we can compare results?
On the second question – there is no wrong thing to do here, that’s part of the fun of it! You just get different results which you might like or not. Usually when using stencils like this it’s using the stencil to add something to the final image.Check out some of these images by other light painters:
This image by TigTab uses light stencils to create a scene –
http://www.diyphotography.net/files/images/3/4690154511_972f976eb4.jpg
I personally really like that image and it’s made with long exposure, five stencils, and some good solid planning.
He likely did this with a wide open aperture and his lens set to infinity on ISO 100 or something very close. That’s a really great setting for light painting that I often use myself.
You will notice that the camera is not directly pointed at the bulk of the stencils. The stencils are used to add to the scene which when you look at it without the stencils is pretty blah and uninteresting. The artist saw something more though and used that scene for his canvas and light stencils to create the composition.On the other hand you can create an interesting image by pointing the camera directly at the stencil. This image created by truemarmalade is a pretty interesting use of a light stencil to create an image as well.
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs35/i/2008/301/9/a/Hand_Tree_Light_Stencil_by_truemarmalade.jpg
There he points the camera right at the stencil but also created an interesting composition by adding his hand to make it appear as if the light tree sprouted from it.So to recap:
There is no right and wrong. The only wrong you can do is by not going out and trying things out for yourself. Depending on our gear you may find yourself limited a little but even with a point and shoot you can get good results. You just have to do it and see what you like!
I do encourage you guys to go out there on the web and use search engine of choice to look around at some of the great light painting out there. You can find sites with tons of guides very similar to this one and more. I will eventually make new guides for this group so we have ones made for Light Stalking or maybe someone else here will beat me to one or two of them. The whole thing here is that you have someone who is willing to help and has done a boatload of light painting so can help you solve problems and answer questions. The creativity and motivation to get out there and try it out is all on you guys though. To tell you a little secret I’m using helping you guys out to force myself to get a little more motivated to go do some new creative light paintings. The bulk of the art I create anymore ends up for commercial use for selling at the fine art shows I make a living from and this is my way of keeping things fun for me where I don’t have to make something that has to be sold. You help me out by letting me help you learn.Try having your camera focus on the light while shining another light at the light or with the lights in the room on. You might also have the camera too close to the light too. See if that helps you out! Does your camera have a manual focus? You can always try manually focusing on the light if it does.
I hope that helps you out!Maybe a bit but it’s a great place to light paint! 🙂
Eloquently said Tom what an image means to you and what it means to the viewer are often two different things. A challenge with any created image is to get both creator & viewers to agree on it’s beauty even if that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and different for each one that sees it.
I should add on my post on the leading lines part that there are leading lines: the background swirls that make you car sick following and are distracting overall, and the stems of the flowers leading to the vase and pretty much exact center of the image. None of which are really great choices as there’s a lack of interest in the center of the image….uhm overall image.
I will add that that I like the fallen petals too. 🙂I agree @mopho which is why I posted the light on a string exercise first in an effort to start things off:
http://www.lightstalking.us/members/greykat/activity/56793/
I have to apologize since a lot of people seemed to have missed that guide due to my lack of experience posting on these boards. Thanks @mopho for the posting tips!
I’m working on a couple of things for the group for learning light painting now and should have some more posts for you in the near future. I worked for a couple of hours last night working on creating a light stencil box walk-through which should be fun for everyone to try as well as spending a bit of time reworking some of my class instruction materials on light painting into an article which is going to take a little time. Hopefully by the time I get the stencil guide finished some of you will have had the time to try out the light on a string exercise and post results.
Just a tip for everyone since this is the holiday season:
I was out last night buying some supplies for the stencil guide and ran across a good buy and a useful tool in a light painters kit that you all may want to go grab up one or two of. The item is made by Holiday Time and called LED teeny Light Set. This is a small 30 LED light string that’s powered by 3 C batteries. If you can find the 12 LED light strings powered by 2 AA batteries those work great too and aren’t as expensive on battery use. I picked up two strings of the 30 LED last night at my local Walmart for $7.98 each. These little LED light strings are whats used in creating light domes, geometric patterns, trailing effects, and a lot more.
One of the great things beside it’s really fun to do light painting is that it’s also a fairly cheap thing to practice as far as gear goes. Whenever I’m out shopping with my wife I keep an eye open for new lights and pick up things over time. Since I’m also a caver buying new lights is second nature as you can never really have enough so I spot a lot of deals and will post some good ones when I find them.
