My earliest experiments in lightpainting

I've noticed lately, and I could be imagining this, there's been a decline in the amount of new lightpainting images seen on social media. It's like everything has been done and I don't see much actual innovation. I certainly have felt like I've done pretty much all sub genres of the artform and I've been exploring landscape photography rather then lightpainting.

So for inspiration, I've been looking back through some of my very old images. By old I mean up to 12 years ago when I first started in the world of lightpainting.

A quick look through and I discovered some stuff I wouldn't dream of doing nowadays. This is a random post of lightpainting images which are worthy of another airing!!

Alien visitation in my garden

Probably 10 years ago or more I had an obsession with making the lightpainting tools myself. This is a bike wheel located on a home made A frame to enable to wheel to stand vertically. I festooned the wheel with "el-wire" as in electro-luminescent wire and spun during a long exposure. I also used coloured flashlight to light up the fence.

The Pixelstick Phase

Every novice lightpainter goes through various phases of their development. I thought it was a great idea at the time to experiment with a programmable and individually addressable LED stick known as a "pixelstick" In the end I felt like this was cheating and indeed there was quite a lot of work posted by others using this gadget. Nowadays not so much and I have long since given my pixelstick away.

Learning as you go

Way back in the distant past, @fadetoblack and I were at a similar level of skill and we literally tried new ideas and bounced techniques off each other. This is the one where we learned that background seperation would be useful!

Close but no cigar

I quickly realised that I might have had a touch of OCD. Not in the clinical sense but getting something like this absolutely perfect was virtually impossible. I look at this now thinking how primitive it is!!

101 uses for Christmas lights

This particular tunnel known as Oldknows Tunnel is no longer accessible. It was originally built for factory workers during the Industrial Revolution era and was muddy as hell!

Freezing one's nether regions off!!

This was from a memorable evening with @fadetoblack where the temperature was around -6 celcius and we lightpainted for around 3 hours!! I think I can safely say both @fadetoblack and I prefer to keep our knees warmer these days!!

A lightpainter is born

At the beginning of my lightpainting journey, I was lucky enough to collaborate with some of the UK's top lightpainters. This is AndyK demonstrating the half round orb where I suggested he pop himself in the middle like he's hatching from an egg. A fun night with a dodgy colour scheme!!

Quite possibly not recommended

Quite a few lightpainters think that all lightpainting revolves around fire. I went through a phase where all I did was spin steel wool set alight. This was a questionable location to spin sparks but I assured myself at the time that the roof was steel and I couldn't possibly set it alight!!

Still as yet untitled

I knocked together this experiment with Tim and at the time I couldn't think of a title or a description for this image. Eight or so years later, I still can't think of one!

Behind the scenes

@fadetoblack and I worked out a system where I would shoot a lightpainting image where he would assist me and then we would swap where I would assist for his shot. This is a behind the scenes image where I was busy rotating the camera as Tim moved backwards in the frame with his home made dome tool. We did this stuff in one photographic exposure and to this day we still do!

Recognition

You know you're on to something when a photo magazine likes your stuff even if it was fairly basic.

More early days images to come in another post!!

About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in urbex and artistic model photography. I'm always on the lookout for someone to collaborate with; please don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to create art.

Social Media
https://www.facebook.com/fastchrisuk
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fastchris/

WHAT IS LIGHTPAINTING?

Lightpainting is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source while taking a long exposure photograph, either to illuminate a subject or to shine a point of light directly at the camera, or by moving the camera itself during exposure. Nothing is added or removed in post processing.

Single exposure Light Art Photography - no layers - no tricks - no photoshop

If you would like to see more lightpainting please give the Lightpainters United Community a follow and you will be introduced into the illuminating world of light painting!

If you want to see more examples of lightpainting, feel free to check out these guys:

Mafu Fuma | Oddballgraphics | FadetoBlack | DAWN | Mart Barras | Stefan Stepke | Nikolay Trebukhin | Lee Todd | Stabeu Light | Maxime Pateau | Stephen Sampson | lightandlense | Neil Rushby | L.A.C.E.

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