Light Painting
If you saw my last blog about a trip to Anglesey you might remember that the very last photo was of swirling trails of light. This was inspired by the technique known as ‘light painting’, where a light source is used to draw or paint within a photograph - think writing out words with sparklers at night and you’ll get an idea how this works. In this blog I’ll show you a series of photos I took using this technique.
I started taking photos like this on the journey home from last year’s 'The Photography Show'.
Feeling inspired from the show with my camera in hand and sitting as a passenger in a car, I looked for something to photograph which was a bit tricky at first.
After a bit of playing around I ended up creating these photos by using the front and rear lights of the other cars on the motorway.
I found it fun taking these, a bit like the photographic equivalent of what doodling is to drawing, where you just play about and see what happens.
Half a year later I had another opportunity to take more photos like this on the journey back from Anglesey.
As we got in to the city centre of Liverpool more light sources started to open up to me to use in combination with car lights.
I create these photos by setting my camera’s shutter speed to around 3-4 seconds to give me time to move the camera around to - essentially - draw the light trails on to the camera’s sensor.
As you might imagine this requires some trial and error as I can’t see what I’m capturing as I take the photo…
…and as a passenger in a car l have no control over the positioning and movement of lights. Reacting to this is part of the fun as it can be a nice surprise to see what you’ve captured.
Thanks for taking a look at this series. I’ll be keeping an eye out for further opportunities to expand and develop on these light painting photos and hopefully share them with you. If you have any thoughts or questions about these photos then please leave a comment below.
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