Wednesday, 25 April 2012

“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.”


Read on for a chance to be mentioned on my page, with your photos and a link to your page!
A lot of you will have heard of, or even tried light drawings. If you haven’t I’m about to explain what they are, they are well worth a go, really fun and you can get some really interesting and successful images. A light drawing is an image you paint using a torch or another source of light, then you get a glowing line drawing when the image is developed. Now I say developed, but I think the best way personally, is to produce the images digitally. This is for the pure reason that a perfect image sometimes takes a few trial runs, and you don’t want to waste a film, or be disappointed when your film is developed. So like I said, digital is my personal preference for this technique. The great thing about light drawing is that, you can use a really basic camera and still get good effects. All you really need is the ability to change your shutter speed. The reason I said that it can take a couple of times to get right is because you can’t see what you are drawing, so it’s all a guessing game really. So to create a light drawing you will need:
A camera
A dark room
A tripod
A light source such as a torch
When I say dark room I don’t mean it in the photographic sense, I literally mean a room with no light. Attach your camera securely onto your tripod and set the shutter speed from anywhere between about 3-30 seconds. If your light is really bright you’ll want to reduce the time. I like to use quite a dim light and draw for quite a while, so about twenty seconds, but this is something you can experiment with. Now turn off the lights in the room, and make sure the only source of light is coming from your torch. Press the shutter and draw anything you like, just paint the air in front of you. Then check out the results. If your results are too bright you’ve got the shutter speed set too high, or your light is too bright.

Tips- if you move the light very fast, you will create a thin line, move it slowly and the line will be thicker. Switch the light on and off and you will get separate lines.

Glow sticks and coloured lights make really interesting light drawings.

When I started doing light drawings, trying to paint perfect images in the air, I had many failed attempts, but I soon learnt how to make it work.

Tip- Don’t always try and draw a perfect picture, swooping your arm and spinning around in random motions can create better images sometimes.

Now if you are wondering why this blog post is titled with a quote, it’s because Picasso said that, I love that quote I think it’s wonderful, but that’s not the reason I chose it really, in fact Pablo Picasso himself did light drawings.

An Image by Picasso.
As you can see, his light is illuminating him and his background, so I am pre-warning you that your background and yourself may become visible. But sometimes that really works in your favour. Another famous light drawer was a guy named Eric staller who creates some fantastic images with light.

Here are a couple I took. Not great, but really fun to shoot. I took these with my friends and it was a real life, dancing around with torches haha, so if you fancy a laugh....



Bye for now

p.s
I hope you enjoy making light drawings. If you have any light drawing pictures you have taken, email them to me and I will feature them on my blog with a link to your webpage or twitter. More views for you!

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