Light Painting

Cool light techniques.

I love doing tricky things in camera.
Look, I work with software all day long at my regular gig, so when I get home, I don’t really want to spend hours and hours working with Photoshop to make a “photograph”.  To me, the whole point is to make photographs with the camera, not with software.  I know, it probably makes me an antique, but, well, there it is.
I’ve done some work with light painting, though, thanks to my tragic loss of archived photos last week, most of the results of that have been lost.  Still, it was fun and the few light painting photos I posted to Flickr did seem to be well received, so I’ve thought about doing it again.  And, this time, I think I’d like to make fancier light painting tools.
(That shot to the left there is one of mine from that set on Flickr.)

If you’d like to try your hand at it, check out this article on DIYPhotography.net, titled Light Painting and EL Wire Secrets Revealed.
For those of you not familiar with the term, EL Wire is “ectroluminescent wire“, which, in a nutshell, is phosphorescent wire that glows when you put a charge on it.  If you’re a science-fiction or movie fan, you saw a lot of that in 2010’s TRON:Legacy movie.  In the article I linked to at the top of the paragraph, the author uses EL wire to make amazing light painting effects, in camera.  In fact, even if you’re not interested in doing this, but just want to see something cool, go look at that article.  Trust me, those shots are awesome!

And, if you’re a photographer, why not give this a shot this weekend?  Really, it’s fun and a lot easier than it might seem.  And, you can use flashlights you probably already have around the house or some cheap LED “glow sticks”, like I did, that you can get easily and cheaply.
Give it a try and have some fun!