Research and Inspiration

Light painting is a photographic technique

that involves the movement of light whilst
the cameras shutter is open. In order to
capture the moving light source you will
need to set your camera to a long exposure,
this can be anything from 10 seconds to
several minutes depending on how much light
you want to expose. Light painting is best
done in the dark and somewhere fairly
secluded so that you can keep in control of
your image and the light you want exposed to
the sensor.

Shoot Plan
: I am going to do this shoot in a large field.
: I will need to do this, as it is getting dark so that I am able to use a
phone torch.
: As well as a phone torch I am going to experiment with sparklers. To compare
the effect they give and to see which works better.
: I am going to need three models to use as silhouettes in order to get a good
shape of light.
: This shoot will be a lot of experimentation in order to achieve different
things. Also for the aspect of timings within the shutter and allowing enough
to get all of the light in but also not having too much time so there is
unwanted light.
: Some of the shapes I want to make is the outline of a person, lightbulb
and/or flower.
Edits
This image is one of my
favourites although it did
take a while to achieve the
shapes I had imagined. to
create these shapes me and
another person used our
phone torches and drew these
in the air starting from the
floor and going up. To edit
it I adjusted the brightness
and contrast to make the
light brighter and the
background darker. Next I
cropped a small amount of
the background off to make
the flowers the centre of
the image and therefore more
in focus.
The inspiration for this photograph was Harry Potter. The light effects in
these films are shown when two people are battling. I thought painting with
light could show this. In this image are two people standing in a position as
if they are repelling and/or shooting the light from their hands. Whilst they
were standing I made the white lines and when I got to the middle I covered the
light with my finger so that a red light was created and I could paint the rest
of the light in the image. This image worked well because it shows that
experimentation can work.

This image was very much

freestyle. Whilst the
shutter was open we ran
freely with the phone
torches to create random
shapes and lines.
Although this was an
unplanned photo I do like
the effect that it has
left me with. The editing
that I did was crop the
edges slightly and then
turn the brightness dow
and increase the
contrast. Overall this
mad the background darker
and the light brighter.

The light in this photo

works almost exactly how I
planned it, however the
people are out of focus
which means the lines of
light aren’t clear and
defined how I would prefer
them to be. Despite this I
do like how this photo looks
and if I was to reshoot any
I would reshoot this one to
make sure it is in focus. I
think this would be more
effective if it was.
Shoot Analysis
: The aim of this shoot was to create shapes with light. I
definitely achieved that.
: I did try using sparklers to paint with light however the weather
conditions were pretty windy so they were difficult to light and
they would go out fast.
: The phone torch was the best thing to use for the effect I wanted.
: some specific shapes I wanted to make was a light bulb and/or
flower, I did mange to achieve both of these things along with other
freestyle shapes that weren’t necessarily planned.
: If there was one thing I could do better it would be to try and
keep the lens in focus, I thing this would have changed the effect
of some images for the better.