Demo video

             This is a demo video made by ATX Light Junkies, who is quite active

          on Youtube and Flickr.  They are full of fun, new ideas, always sharing

          their interesting photos with the rest of the light painting lovers in the

          world. Very inspirational when you're running low on ideas.

             It's not that hard to make something as good as this, you just need a bit

          practice, a steady hand and a lot of creativity to make up a good photo.

Light domes

By Andrew White himself

Ben Cullen

     Thanks to Andrew White there is a tutorial on how to do these amazing mind-boggeling domes. I must give him the honor of being the one posting photos 

on flickr since 2011 and being the first to give a tutorial on how to do the 

dome. Quite straightforward, but yes it's going to take some effort to build 

your tool. But hey, once you've got the tool, it's only play, play play!

     So here he is, telling you how to do The Dome and how to wield it like a pro, in his own words:

"All you need

•    1 bike wheel. Any regular circle will do but bike wheels are essentially hollow and that see-throughness helps with the 3D illusion 
•    1 set of 20 or so festive lights from your seasonal surplus superstore
•    An axle, cut to the length of the wheel's radius 

What you do

   1.     Evenly space the lights around the rim of the wheel. 

        The further out you go, the more the bottom of your dome shape will appear 

        as a point, not a curve. 

        In the early sessions I spent forever doing running repairs as LEDs would get 

        knocked out of position or whatever - this idea for fixing using tiny zip ties 

        comes from flickr's own LED Eddie who, coincidentally, was the first to 

        demonstrate he'd work out the dome technique. 

2.     Fix the axle firmly to the wheel's hub. 

      When the tool is in its primed position, the highest point of the wheel rim 

      should be directly above the pivot point. 

3.     Switch the lights on and roll the wheel around smoothly and at a steady pace. 

      In this shot I've set up the tool ready to go and lit it so it's visible in the shot. 

      Then I created a dome that looks overlaid on top of the tool. 

      I fitted cable extensions and push-to-make switches to my lights so I can get 

      them on and off without hassle. 

      Always start with the lights facing you - any stutters/overlap or underlap will 

      appear at the rear of the shape away from the camera. 

4.     Amaze your friends

      So there it is. Go forth lightly."

Ben Cullen

Greg Mckenzie

Lain Sword

David Savage

More than a paintbrush

 

                                          This photo taken by David Parry kind of looks 

                                  like a typical photoshop technique, but believe 

                                  me IT IS NOT! It is a manually taken photo, with 

                                  just a little playing around with colour.

                                 Have a look at David's tutorial to see exactly 

                                 how simple it is to get this effect

                      1. You will need:

                             

                                  - Torch (he used a small MagLite)

                                  - Paintbrush                               

                                  - Aluminium foil                         

                                  - Tripod mounted camera           

                                  - Wired remote (optional)             

 

                 2.             Make a snoot out of aluminium foil to attach 

                                 to the end of the torch, so you can control 

                                 the direction and spread of the light. His 

                                 looked something like this.

                              

                                 Note: You can use tape to stop light coming 

                                 through the gap in the join

                3.              If you are taking the photos by yourself you 

                                 can attach the wired remote to the paintbrush, 

                                 but you can also get someone to help you 

                                 taking the photos

 

 

                4.              Set the camera to manual, F/8, 5 secs and 

                                 focused to infinity.

Hold the torch and the paintbrush together 

                                 as shown below. Press the shutter button. 

                                 Hold the torch still for about 1 sec, and then

                                 move it away from the paintbrush as shown.

 

                 5.            The end result David got after 20-30 exposures:

               A little post-production:

                           David felt the lines were too uniform, so he found 

                           another exposure and added it as an 'overlay' layer 

                           to the original. This produced a more random light 

                           stream as below.

 

                         He then used 'curves' to change the color of the

                         light to purple, and did some other clean up work

                         like enhancing the paintbrush. To produce this

                         final result.

 

This tutorial by David Parry were found on www.dgrin.com

Painting glasses

     Glass objects create brilliant effects for light painting, because of it's reflectivity and transparency. Play around with different glass objects in different shapes and textures, from creative angles to create even more photographic quality. You can use it with water or without it, try some water drops and see what you can get from that.

     For these shots it is advisable to use a studio to get the best results, it can be a home made studio as the one used in the tutorial

Nasim Mansurov

Nasim Mansurov

Ankia Oosthuysen

Humayunn Peerzaada

markoneswift on Flickr

  Watch the tutorial about a simple demonstration on how Peter Bargh does it.