Experimenting with Light Painting

I've been doing some Light Painting lately. I thought you might like to see something different. I took these in my backyard in the last week or two.

If you're going to play with fire, you might as well look cool doing it

Have you added the pics AD? I ain't got 'em here. Curious I is!

I've got 3 in the post, Mr Q. I see them. Not sure how else I can share them with you? I could add them to one of my albums, I think.

Any ideas?

I just made the album they were in "public". If anyone could let me know if they see them now, I'd appreciate it. Not sure what else to try.

For what it's worth, these pictures are straight out of my camera. No special effects, no computer graphics, no editing.

Just a single long exposure each, using a moving light source. In the first two pics, I used a child's "sparkler" tied to a tool I made for spinning it.

I'd rather not comment on how I did the third, as it's a bit more risky and I don't want to be responsble for anyone else getting hurt. My mom always used to say "Do as I say, not as I do." lol

Spectacular - thank you!

I didn't see them earlier, but now I see the three.

Thank you for letting me know you see them. Glad you liked.

Sent from my nook

Love your pictures. They are amazing!

Dunno why they didn't show earlier...really looks like fun! Awesome live too I'll bet. Sparklers...wow...pretty good...just one and cumulative with the open shutter? Like the orb looking one. Gotta know how the last one was done too...like a steel mill still that! Yep, you wz having fun I figure!

They are so neat! I didn't know you could "paint with light." It reminds me of when I was a kid and would twirl and wave sparklers around.

The neat thing is that I'm in the center of each of those first two pics spinning the sparkler. You just don't see me on film because I wasn't exposed to enough light.

Yes, each picture was just one long exposure. You move the light source, in this case a sparkler, in a certain way to make the orb shape or whatever you're drawing. The exposure time on these was 30 seconds each. My sparklers lasted about 25 secs each.

I took another like the top one. I call it "firestorm". It looks like a tornado of fire. Once the sparkler died out, I triggered my flash and exposed my wife into the picture. It looks like she is trapped inside a tornado of fire

Unfortunately, I only confiscated a few boxes of sparklers from my kids last year. lol. I've used them all. I've built some LED tools to get more pictures like this, but for ones that look like they are throwing off "flames"....that will have to wait till July when I can get more sparklers. lol.

I can see them!! I think that's really cool and something worth trying sometime.

Try it if you can! It is fantastic fun, and incredibly easy! You'd be amazed. Each of these pics only took 30 seconds of exposure time, and maybe 3 or 4 minutes to set the camera up on a tripod. If you've only got 20 minutes, you can still get a bunch of really neat pictures.

You can actually write or paint on the film in the same way...using any light source. We set up in our living room and my wife draws pictures of flowers using a laser pointer. We call it digital charades or digital pictionary. lol. I'm making some LED tools that people can use to make these, and giving classes at my local library next month teaching people how to do this.