Light Painting

This came out much better than I thought it would. :-)

I've been wanting to try something like this for a while but wasn't sure how best to set it up. I set up my camera on a tripod pointing at a black backdrop (a black sheet hanging on the wall) and set the camera on manual with a low ISO and high F-stop so it was as dark as possible. After experimenting with a number of light sources I found my small LED pocket torch gave the best results (it actually has 3 small LEDs in it, hence the multiple lines). The torch is just small enough to hold like a pencil with the light shining backwards towards the camera. I set the camera on "Bulb" (which means exposure time is manual) and using my cable release I could open the aperture, "sketch" in the air with the torch and then close the aperture. I did only a minimal post processing on it to increase the contrast and brightness to make the light stand out a bit but it didn't really need much.

It took me quite a few attempts to get it right but I think this came out quite well for a first attempt, I would like to try something a bit more complex with a real life object in the photo and multiple colours, that will need more planning and some sort of colour filter on the torch not sure if that will need multiple shots merged or if it will work in one.