Light painting = fun :-)

Had a go at this with my mate Carl and it was really enjoyable. Theres an instant satisfaction and reward factor which far outweighs the amount of effort required to achieve the result! We used a digital SLR and LED lights,bike lights, and a laser pen.

Here is my favourite thing we made:



Carl made a HDR image for the background(incorporating several different exposures into one layer - i.e. using a 2 minute exposure combined with a 1/2 second exposure.) You can make the HDR image afterwards using Photoshop (File -> Automate -> Merge to HDR.)

We took a sequence of images - all on a 10 second exposure. We used Carls Nikon D40 DSLR camera on very low iso settings mounted on a tripod. I then used a LED light to mark out each character. (Apparently you can get 4 LED lights for a £1 at poundsavers.)

Later in After Effects I was able to layer up the character walking on top of the HDR background.

Here is one by Carl - quite a funky idea:



And another by me.. I would like to try this again - only making it much smoother. Here I have removed the HDR background. This background is the same composition as above only with the 10 second exposure instead of the combined awe of many exposures.



Here are some stills of some other ideas we tried out..











I am very keen to do more and get better at using this medium. It's a great way to produce art and animation.