Tag: light painting

  • Yosemite Elves and Sprites (light painting in the forest)

    Yosemite Elves and Sprites (light painting in the forest)

    As you saw in our last post, we recently visited Yosemite. We did this in part to capture the stars but also to hunt down the mythical forest-dwellers that spin light in to art. Without comment, here’s 4 of their attempts. A tutorial might follow. Depends how they’re feeling.

  • Burning at the night garden

    Burning at the night garden

    Our friends at the Star Circle Academy were kind enough to let us play with fire again. The trip to the beach was a hoot, as 15 or so new friends learned how to burn and spin steel wool & magnesium, how to use light painting to plant a night garden, and generally improved their…

  • One Night Of Good Carma

    One Night Of Good Carma

    CARMA is the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy. Bet you’re pleased you now know that! We were under the impression that you could see it from the side of highway 395, south of Bishop CA, and north of Big Pine. Our plan was that we’d jump a fence and spend a night avoiding…

  • The next generation of light painting

    The next generation of light painting

    We’ve never done this before, but here goes. All the pictures and links you’re about to see belong to someone else. That someone is Darren Pearson, known on Flickr as DariusTwin. Now where we build tools that make light patterns, and our  new friend Stuart makes pictures appear from nowhere in a studio, Darren makes…

  • 4 Days In Death Valley

    4 Days In Death Valley

    [wzslider autoplay=”true”] We were delighted to be invited on a sleep depriving, dust breathing, 4 day shooting marathon in California’s Death Valley. This post documents the ordeal and showcases, what we’re sad to admit, are less than stellar photographs. Day 1. We arrive in Las Vegas as the light is fading. Not bothering with the…

  • Tutorial: Building the ‘Mega Light Wand 2000’ light painting tool

    Tutorial: Building the ‘Mega Light Wand 2000’ light painting tool

    When you first get in to Cold Cathode light painting your ambitions will be small. You’ll be impressed when you’ve finally worked out how to take something that normally fits inside your souped-up computer and turned it in to something that works in an abandoned warehouse late at night. The kit usually contains at least…

  • Lady Of Light

    Lady Of Light

    One of the nice things about light painting is that as long as you’re not a purest (a straight from the camera kinda guy) you get all sorts of options in post processing that are often surprising. I’ve been working on some new light painting tools. I thought they were done and so took them…

  • Fire Painting Class 101

    Fire Painting Class 101

    I am delighted to announce that the Star Circle Academy was stupid enough to let me co-host another ‘light painting with fire’ event with Eric. We spent Friday night on the beach with a brace of fire lovers burning things and capturing the results in full color glory. Light painting is cool. Painting with fire…

  • Tutorial: Light Painting Tools

    Tutorial: Light Painting Tools

    People stop me in the streets and ask ‘Aren’t you that guy that does those things?’ Once the confusion passes it normally, fortunately, turns out they’re talking about light painting, and the next question they ask is ‘How?’ The exact technique for each picture will be revealed as and when this blog progresses, but for…

  • Tutorial: Neighing in the rain (white balance)

    Tutorial: Neighing in the rain (white balance)

    It’s all about the crop or It’s all about the temperature I posted the below picture last week. I was very unhappy with it at the time but I couldn’t work out how to make it better. Thanks to May‘s version of the image, I now know what I was doing wrong. The above picture…

  • Slinging Fire in the Fog

    Slinging Fire in the Fog

    The above photo is not mine. It was taken by May Wong. She kindly allowed me to showcase it here, I’ll explain why in a mo. Here’s her Facebook page. For a while now Eric and I have talked about teaching a light painting class, and while nothing has come of it, we have used…

  • Taking Aim

    Taking Aim

    As you’ll find out if you stick around, I’m terrible at flash photography. That said, I’m trying hard and learning a lot. The above photo has a large strobe in front and to the left of the image to give Deanna the front light see needs, but the scene is mostly lit by the light…