Ms. Kloppenburg sent me an email the other day explaining that you are looking at special effects in photography. I see you beat me here before I had a chance to say hi! Through my blog, I am able to see what posts people are looking at and I can see that my light photography posts have been accessed. This is great!
Light painting/ photography (the terms seem to mean the same thing) is a lot of fun, and you can achieve so awesome photos! It also takes trial and error, time, patience and an open mind. I have found that this is one of my favorite activities to do with photography, and as you’ve probably seen, I was even able to get some of my friends to light pain with me.
I don’t know quite how much time you will get to spend looking at my project or how much time you have to experiment with it this semester, as there are just a few weeks left of school! I hope you will get to try something out and to have some fun. If you have any questions or comments, please post them on the specific blog post and I can try to help you out. Chances are someone else is curious or also wants to know more about a specific idea, so let’s start a conversation.
I do have some tutorials and there are others out there, but I would say start off by simply grabbing a camera and experimenting, how better to learn than my trying yourself and see what happens. I know I did that the first time I tried this technique and I kind of failed miserably, but from there I was able to learn more, practice and improve. Most importantly, have fun!
If you happen to produce some pictures, be sure to send me some links as I would love to see them.
Major Project Option B: “Based on the idea that individuals are now more able to learn and share online, you will choose something significant that you would like to learn, and you will share your progress openly in an online space. The ‘something’ might be an instrument, a language, a sport or almost anything that requires more than a few hours of effort. Students should be prepared to spend 50-100 hours on this project. Regular documentation of the learning, including a before and after assessment, will comprise the assessment of this task.” – ECMP355 Course Syllabus
For this project, I combined art and photography and chose to learn about Light Painting which is also known as Light Photography or Light Graffiti. I had first seen light painting pictures from a friend on Facebook and I knew that this was something I wanted to do myself.
This project took a lot of time – I was amazed that when I looked back at the log I kept, I spent just over 50 hours: trying different techniques, creating pictures and images, watching videos, looking for resources, sharing what I’ve learned with friends and looking at pictures and videos for inspiration.
If you haven’t seen any of the light painting that I have done, or if you have, I put together the following video highlighting some of what I have done:
*I used Screen-cast-o-matic because Windows Movie Maker would not play the animated gif images that I had created
My thoughts on this learning project:
Positives:
I was fortunate that I had a DSLR camera and did not need to buy one. However, it is possible to create light painting photos with a point and shoot digital camera, however it requires a bit more effort and time.
I was able to purchase flash lights from the dollar store.
I used books and tables instead buying of a tripod.
There are thousands of amazing light painting photographs on the internet.
I was able to attempt to create any idea that came to mind.
The tutorials I found provided easy to follow instructions that allowed me to produce similar effects.
You can create photos using different iPad apps.
It is a great activity to do with friends.
This is something I would like to do with students in my own classroom one day.
Negatives:
Most of this project was done individually (a choice I made) and because of this, there were restrictions on the time I had to create a photo – the highest timer I had on my camera was for 30 seconds and after this time frame, the photo would produced.
A lot of the websites and tutorials I came across were almost identical to one another and it took a lot of time and searching to find new and different ideas and skills.
While I browsed through hundreds of photos online which inspired me, I had to be really creative in coming up with what I wanted to create. The videos and photos and tutorials did not tell me for example how to paint a dog, I had to figure this out for myself.
I could have been more creative.
Changes:
I would have done this project with a partner.
I would spend more time perfecting one technique – for example light orbs
I wish I could draw better!
There are so many more different pictures I still want to create
Overall, this was a wonderful learning experience and it goes to show you can learn almost anything online. I am pleased with the variety of techniques I tried, the pictures I produced and that I was able to share with classmates and others my progress. It was meaningful when I was doing this project with Kirk and some of my other classmates as I was in the role of a teacher/expert and they were interested in what I was showing them. I was also neat to see how many people viewed my posts, commented on things that they liked and to be able to share my pictures through my Flickr account and my posts through my Twitter account.
I hope to keep creating different pictures even though ECMP355 has ended, so be sure to check back for updates! But until then you can review my previous posts and images through the different pages I have created and other accounts that I have:
Yesterday, some of us from our Middle Years Education group got together. A few of them had been interested in the light painting project I was doing for this ECMP355 class, so I told them that I would bring my camera and a few flash lights.
I explained to them the basic idea of light painting – in a dark room, you draw pictures using flash lights where the light shines toward the camera. The camera is on a manual setting which controls the lens and the shutter. When you draw, the camera captures the light and produces an image.
I was in charge of the camera and I let them try it out! We began with Kirk demonstrating how to draw a picture:
Then the others wanted to try. Here is what they came up with:
We did some group pictures:
We finished with some outlines:
Everyone had a great time, the pictures turned out great and I was happy to be able to share my learning with others. Thank you to everyone who helped me out!
I tried something new in regards to light photography/painting. I found the following website, How to Shoot Light Trails and after reading through it, I decided to give it a ago. Basically when you shoot light trails, you set your camera on a tripod, select the manual setting, have a low ISO number, a high aperture number and a low shutter speed. To see what all of those camera terms mean, I find this guide helpful which comes from Miguel Yatco.
Here is a great tutorial that walks you through the basics of shooting light trails:
So I picked tonight to give it a try, regardless of the drizzling rain outside. I couldn’t really seem to find any bridges in Regina or ones that put me above traffic so I opted for taking pictures while sitting in my car. It turned out all right I think (click to enlarge):
This week, I borrowed my aunt’s iPad2. I opened up the AppStore and searched for light photography. I found the following app:
Long Exposure Photography – V Light Trip (Click on the description to see it enlarged)
Basically, this app takes a video and puts the individual frames into one photograph, and blurs the moving images while keeping stationary objects in focus.
In my third light photography post, I created light orbs and decided to do this again using the iPad. It was easier with this app, because I did not have to worry about spinning the light in an exact circle, and it took only 5 seconds as opposed to 30 seconds to create the following images (Click the images to see them enlarged):
While the camera on the iPad is not the same as my Nikon Dslr, the photos turned out pretty good!
Then, I tried to take some other photos using this app. The following are various shots from around Regina (Click to enlarge the images and see titles for each):
I would recommend this app. You can adjust how long you take the video for from 1 second to several minutes. It is neat to experiment with and you never really know how your pictures will turn out!
Long Exposure Photography – V Light Trip
Still Learning 