Painting With Light

Out of all the assignments we've done so far this year, painting with light has definitely been my favourite. There is a lot of really cool stuff you can do to manipulate the light and make super cool designs or exposures. I had lots of fun trying out different things. Here are some of the pictures I took: All are taken with a Nikon D3100 DSLR and a 18.55mm lens.

When I was taking these photos I was playing around with the idea of making light ugly. Since it's usually used to make things prettier and more pleasant, I wanted to experiment and change it up a bit. To do this I used a flashlight to create an image of someone being hanged (which is not a very nice thing) and someone vomiting into a garbage can. Very lovely. I first painted the subject with white light to illuminate their bodies, and then I ran into the picture behind them (while getting someone to hold down bulb) and drew in designs with the red flashlight. Both were shot with an aperture of f25 and the shutter speed set to bulb.

When shooting this next set of pictures I experiment with painting with light onto the same subject in several different positions. I wanted to be able to document movement across the photo, because I think that has the potential to look super cool.

To shoot the first picture I used an aperture of f25 and a shutter speed of 20 seconds. I had Jenna stand straight up and shone white light on her for 5 seconds, painting light over her entire body. I then turned the light, got her to bend over so her body was on a slant (like she was falling), and shone the light on her for 5 more seconds. I then turned the light off again and then got her to lean against the counter, shining the light on her for a final time. The final product was a photo that documented her in the process of falling over. For the second picture I used the same method, but I got Jenna to stand at the back of the room and take a couple steps forward and to the left each time, making it look like there are a bunch of clones of her standing  in line. Overall, I think the results are super cool :)