Light Painting - Behind The Scenes

I said back in my LED Lamp post that I would knock up a quick guide on how to create those types of images and as promised, here we are!

Before we get started, here are a few things that you'll need:-

-Camera :)

-Tripod - Not essential but if you haven't got one then you'll need to put the camera on a firm surface and make sure that it does not move between shots

-Subject matter (for this purposes of this guide, I used a Champagne bottle

-Torch or other light source

Right, now we can get started

1. Set up your shot with the elements that you want to include. I just went for the bottle with a plain black background.

2. With the room lights on, focus on your image (I just used auto focus). Once focused switch the lens to manual focus - This will stop it trying to focus once the lights are out.
Switch the camera to a long exposure mode. I used the camera in manual (M) and set it to bulb mode with the largest aperture.

3. Switch off the lights and take some shots while illuminating the subject matter with with your light source. I used a home made UV light as seen below.



Here is my image of the Champagne bottle lit by the UV light


(3 second exposure at f/4.5)

4. Right, with that shot in the bag you now can now take the light painting arty shot. I swirled my light around the bottle but you can do anything that you fancy.

Here is my image of the UV pointer swirling around the bottle


(2 second exposure at f/4.5)

5. You now have to combine the 2 images using your image editing software. There are various ways that you can do this but I followed the simple steps below...

-Open both the images in your preferred image editing software

-Copy the second image that was created (light painting one)

-Paste this as a new layer in the first image that was created

-Set the layer blending mode to Screen

This is basically it - You may want to make many other adjustments to the image but this is a simple guide to the fundamentals of creating this sort of merged light painting image.

Here is my final image



I hope I have been fairly clear in this tutorial and it all makes sense! If there are any glaring mistakes or you're having trouble following the steps then please comment and I will rectify / give you some pointers.

LED Lamp

Merging an old light source with a modern LED.

I created this image using a home made UV LED pointer and merging a couple of photos.



These types of shots are very quick and easy to do. I will post a quick guide on how to create these sort of images soon.

As usual, click on the image to enlarge (It looks a bit better too!).

Light Painting & Out Takes

I enjoy a bit of light painting and within this age of digital photography you can take shot after shot without worrying about the cost of developing etc

Here is a video containing a few light painting and long exposure photographs that I have taken and the large number of out takes created whilst shooting them!

Light Painting & Out Takes from Steve Murrell on Vimeo.

Happy 2011

Happy New Year and hope that you all enjoyed the festive period. Lets hope that 2011 is a good one for all of us.

What better way to start the year than some seasonal light painting.

Amazing what you can do with a couple of £1 solar garden lights!!

Painting the Darkness

When looking at Google Analytics recently I noticed that I've been getting a lot of hits on my various light painting posts.

With this in mind and having just completed soldering up my new and improved LED ring light I thought I'd revisit this popular topic by playing around with a few shots.

I started simply by rolling the LED ring light along my bed.



This created quite a cool geometric pattern so I then started to play around a bit more.



Followed by going along the floor, up the wall and across the ceiling!



Then I ran out of ideas!!

I think I will revisit this but am thinking of getting hold of (or making) a wheel with LEDs attached as rolling the ring light along smoothly is pretty difficult. Anyway...watch this space.

By the way, if you fancy trying out some light painting and your camera has manual settings then you don't need to make anything. As I've shown before in this post you can just use a phone as your light source or any old torch etc. Below is a quick shot that I took using my iPhone.



As usual, click on the images to enlarge.

More Light Painting

Following on from my previous post on light painting I was messing around and decided to try some writing and outlining to see how it would turn out.

These were both created using an LED torch with 10 second exposure for the writing and 36 seconds for the outlining of the sofa.

Light Painting

Following the fun I had with the fairy lights I've done some more light related shots.

This time with long exposure and a LED torch to create some light paintings.

Light Junkie

I have always enjoyed experimenting with light in its different forms to see what effects you can capture. I spent some time playing around with the camera and using a laser pointer and a mobile phone as the light sources to see what I could produce.

Using a long exposure (generally around 15 seconds) here are some of the photos that I captured.

Using a mobile phone as the light source




Laser pointer going back and forth across stainless steel tea and coffee canisters




Laser pointer on wine glass



Outlining a garden chair with a laser pointer