Techniques

In the next few paragraphs I intend to explain about the techniques I used to create my photographs.

Getting Started with Light painting photography.

When starting to prepare to take light painting photographs I needed to make sure the camera was set to a slow shutter speed, this allows me to have enough time to create the light images with light sources I was provided with. A slow shutter speed is important when taking any type of light photography and it is also the first thing you have to do before  even considering taking the pictures as it would not catch the light otherwise and we would just have a normal picture. 

The exposure triangle comes into light photography so I decided to look more into this. The exposure triangle as you can see above contains three separate elements. The ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed. The ISO is an element that controls the camera lens itself and how sensitive it can get to natural light exposure. The second element which is the Aperture is an element that measures how much light can get through the camera lens; it also controls the quantity of light taken through the camera lens. Lastly the third element which is the Shutter Speed; the Shutter Speed calculates how much light is allowed through the camera and into the sensor within the camera. All of these elements are important when it comes to light photography, however the ISO is more important to the quality of the picture. The higher the aperture the higher or sharper the picture will be shown.

The light sources I used to create my images we some small LED lights, I found these gave me a really clear image.

My Techniques.

When taking my pictures I tried to use many different techniques on each photograph as possible. As there are such different techniques out there. So I took a range of photographs, seeing what techniques and images I liked the most. I then chose three images to write about as my final three photographs.

The three images shown above are my final chosen images, and below you can see the images and the techniques I used to create these images. 

My first photo is a flower that I drew using LED lights that we were given by our lecturer. The effect on this photo was to make the flower look like a sketched drawing, but not too messy. I feel that the flower gives off a good effect having more lines of light than needed for the shape. I was considering what I could draw having little amount of time as my Fujifilm camera isn’t compatible with light photography as the aperture only goes up to 8” and the shutter speed only goes to F8.4 and also the iso is automatic so it changes but the highest it will go is 800. As a result of this I had to use the Nikon cameras provided which were much easier to use when it came to aperture, shutter speed and ISO. To take this picture I only took one attempt as I was sharing the camera with 5 other people in a  short period of time so I had to have 3 photos done quickly as I said before about my camera not being compatible so it made it harder as I couldn’t take my pictures elsewhere other than college. It was quite hard to fit the image onto the screen as the timer was set to 30 seconds so once the shutter button had been pressed to take the photo I had to draw something as quickly as possible for the camera to be able to pick it up. The blue/ white light gives the image a cool and more laid back effect making it stand out more.  I am happy with the way this image came out. The aperture used to take this picture was F15 and the shutter speed was 30 seconds. 

My second photograph that I took was totally different from the first one because I used more straight lines and was very accurate with drawing around the people. Instead of just having one colour for each person (stood back to back) I used red and white for the right side then green and blue for the left side, this gives the photograph a mixture of effects, and also making it more eye catching to the viewer as they are focusing on the lights more than the background. I got a friend to draw around me and another friend who I was stood back to back with. There isn’t just an effect on the light, but on me and my friend too as the thing that inspires me about light is the technique, when you or someone else draws around yourself or someone else for this matter it really brings out the person stood still as you can see from the picture I’m stood still so the camera picks up not only the different colour lights contrasting against me and my friend but it picks up us stood there so there is more emotion in the picture drawing the viewers attention to both us and the lights. The image also looks really eye-catching however I think this depends on what colour lights you use because if the lights are really boring and plain then the image becomes less eye-catching. I feel my image is more old-fashioned as the pose is more suited for films and photography etc. This is also because of the lights used they’re mixed so this makes me also feel that the bright colours have that audience grabbing attention about them. The other thing that is interesting about the technique of drawing around something or someone puts that thing or person in perception, giving it a sense of belonging with the light also. I used the same aperture to take this picture which was F15 and the shutter speed was 30 seconds as well.

The last photograph I took was quite a simple photograph to create, I created this photo in a group taking one letter on one photograph and then we edited it on Photoshop putting all the letters into one photograph creating the word “ART” I was in the background of this photograph drawing strange lines and squiggles in the background so the word “ART” stands out more. The technique of creating letters can be very difficult at times, because it has to be mirrored or it doesn’t look right. What I mean by this is if you was to write something normally with light painting photography when you view it on the camera it would be back to front so to be able to do this accurately you would have to write the word backwards; when viewing it on camera and through the camera lens after it would turn out to be the right way around. So to be able to take this photo we had to figure out what way the letters would go and turn out on camera when viewing them. It took a few attempts to take this photograph accurately, as when we viewed it on the camera we was either really unhappy with how it came out or it was back to front. Like most of the photos as a group and I took look really simple to create but in actual fact it is difficult unlike it seems! So after all the fussing around about the ‘A’ letter being the wrong way around we just then flipped it on Photoshop so it look more realistically like an ‘A’ and not something unexpected. For this photo I’m not too sure what the aperture or ISO was set to as this was taken on our friends Cannon 600D camera so we had to keep changing the settings so we could get the accurate levels to which suited the final photographs, however to take this photograph the Shutter speed was set to 30”.

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