Sunday, February 20, 2011

Day 50

Have you ever heard of light painting? The first time I ever heard of it, I was teaching in the Philippines about 8 or 9 years ago. I was sitting at an outdoor patio and a British artist struck up a conversation with my friend Farah and I. We ended up chatting for most of the evening and he took pictures all night long. I have the most amazing picture of me using the light painting technique- I'll search my archives and see if I can find it for tomorrow's post...
Anyway, light painting is a form of photography in which you use a slow shutter speed and a strong light source. The photos are usually taken in a darkened room or outdoors at night and the light source or the camera are moved. Because of the slow shutter speed, the camera records the lights' movements and this results in lines of light on the exposure. The earliest record of an artist using this technique is in 1935 of Man Ray and his "Space Writing."


Picasso also has portraits using this technique...



I didn't start out thinking about light painting today but as I was I trying to take a photo of the moon, it came to mind rather quickly.  We were in a moving car and trying to get a photo at night of the amazing yellow dot in the sky was not working out so well..... then the whole light painting idea popped in my head and these were the results.




Not bad for a first attempt. 

2 comments:

Siphil said...

I love light painting. It's one of my forms of photography. Although I always call it light graffiti. Very cool pictures.

Aubree said...

you're the coolest girl I know.