Tips and examples for Monday's light painting

While I was up at Monument on Wednesday my friends and I had some fun with light painting! As you can see there was so much light with the full moon that we even managed to capture the movement of the people with the torches.

Just remember that the light painting that we will be doing on Monday will be more like the photo above as we will not have the extra light from the full moon to light up our shots. Which is fine as it makes the light trails coming from the torch or torches more pronounced.

You can really have fun with light painting and be as creative as you want! There are so many different ways to pose or objects to light up with your torches.

We will also be bringing some sparklers along to see what effect we get when we use them as our light source instead of torches!

But for now let me try and give you a simple explaination of how light painting works.

Basically you want as much light (which you are controlling) as possible to get to the camera. You can do this by either slowing your shutter speed down as much as you can and/or by using a smaller aperture (so a smaller f-stop number which means the aperture or 'hole' will be bigger and therefore let in more light).

1. Set your camera on the tripod and take a sample shot with flash to help you check that your composition is OK.

2. Set the camera to a slow shutter speed and/or a smaller aperture. If you are outside do nothing. If you are inside - this is the time to turn off the lights.

3. Press the button to take the shot. Once the shutter is open use your flashlight to light the stuff that you want to "paint". You can use the flashlight as a brush and "smear" the light or you can use the light as a pen, and write things in the air.

Areas where you go slowly will be more lit then others. Be careful not to linger too much over the same stop - you will burn it (leave large bight spots on the photo).

4. Once the shutter closes, you are a free person again. Inspect your image and make corrections.

FULL Moon

Gorgeous photo right? Well guess what it was taken at night with no flash......even more amazing is the rest of the photos like the one below are also taken with no flash. What is lighting up the photo you might then ask.....well...believe it or not its the full moon.

A few friends and I decided to head up to Monument last night to make full use of the full moon by using it as a light source. To achieve photo's like these which were taken by Raisa Meiswinkel is to have a camera that you can adjust the shutter speed, a tripod and lots of patience.

I think that after last night we have a another Photosoc excursion on the cards - next full moon we will do an outing up to the monument to show anyone who is interested how to take these shots.

But for now meet Raisa and just enjoy her work :)

Tarryn, Marci and Sarah all absorbing the light from the moon. It was so much fun but you have to remain very very still until the camera has finished taking the shot which can sometimes take a few minutes.

The night lights of Grahamstown come alive!

Light Painting

Light painting....right about now you are probably wondering what that could be and what on earth it has to do with photography! Well it is in fact a very easy way to have fun and take great photographs that give you alot of creative freedom. And all you need is a camera (digital preferably but you can use film), tripod, light of some kind and darkness.

The simplest way that I can explain light painting is to say that you adjust the shutter speed setting on your camera so that it stays open for as long as it possibly can. This is why you need the darkness, because the longer the shutter is open the more light it will let in to the camera. Therefore if you tried to take a photo like this during the day all you would get is a white screen/picture as there as too much light. But when you take it in the dark and you provide the light source you are able to basically paint with the light.

The tripod is used to keep the camera very still as any movement while taking the photo will blur the image as the shutter is still open. The source of light can be anything from a flash light or street light to even a sparkler or campfire. You can even use a full moon as your source of light as long as its a clear night and the surrounding area is dark enough.

Light painting enables you to write, draw or just illuminate objects in your photos. The possiblities of shots using this technique are endless and surprisingly fun to do!

Take a look at the examples provided taken right here on Rhodes campus!