Light Painting: People On Magical Fire
Here’s a light painting trick you can do on the cheap that yields a neat result. And besides...Who doesn’t want to look like a super hero?
If you aren’t familiar with Light Painting, check out the light painting primer or the tools of the trade posts here on the blog.
If you are familiar with Light Painting, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to pull an image with this technique.
Start by picking up a few of these electric glow sticks. You can find them in the outdoors section in department stores, or on Amazon right here.
All you have to do is backlight yourself against a wall and then fill in the silhouette with the glow sticks.
The backlight will give shape and contour to the not very precise glow stick strocks. You could use a strobe, or stand very still and have a friend use a flashlight.
I think the glow sticks look best when shooting at ISO 400 or higher. For the shot below, I had a speedlite strapped to my back that was triggered wirelessly.
Next Up, Let’s Walk Through a Similar Shot
First off, I set the white balance to 2500 kelvin, which made the sky extra blue and contrasted nicely with the red colors I was working with.
I framed the shot up a hill with a steep incline so to get more sky in the shot.
Standing very still, I held a red glow stick on a string in my right hand and waved it around my body, then I switched hands and did the other side. I left the glow stick turned on and walked towards the camera with it to get the large streak of light you see over my head.
I left the shutter open a little while longer so the stars would show up in my silhouette and lit the foreground from the side with a red led flashlight.
Making Of Video
It is sometimes hard to visualize how those individual steps are taken. Fear not! there is a video that shows how it is done.
About The Author
All of Dennis's photography is straight out of the camera with no digital manipulation whatsoever. The effects are all created in camera during the exposure. To find out more, check out denniscalvert.net or read a recent interview.
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Comments
I've been wanting to try
I've been wanting to try this!
Brilliant
Stunning stuff. I'll have to try my hand at light painting sometime soon.
just f'n awesome!
Crazy, man! You've take the concept to a whole new level. Thanks for sharing the technique.
That is terrifically awsome!
That is terrifically awsome!
nice work
thanks for shareing :) the same technique i used in my work http://laurentiunastasa.com/routine.html enjoy :)
Fire
You image is fantastic
great tip
awsome and thanks for the tutorial i love seeing light painting in action
Great fire effect
I'm amazed that you do the flame effect over your silhouette yourself. I always assumed you stood very still and an accomplice waved the lightstick around. Do you prefer the lightsticks to EL wire for flames, or use them for different purposes? (Just got both!) Thanks for a great tutorial.
Query
Another question if you don't mind. For what reason do you light yourself up when you are standing to the left (subject left) of your final image position? I'm not seeing that in the final image. Thanks.
Paul, el wire makes some very
Paul, el wire makes some very cool effects, but I use the glow sticks for the flames. The reason I lit myself was to help the camera autofocus on me. With a two second delay on your cam you can autofus and have enough time to turn the light off.
Autofocus
Thanks Dennis. It never occurred to me that it was for focusing. Difficult when you're operating alone, I guess. I'm not sure when in my camera's delay timer sequence it does the AF, as I usually focus manually. I will have to check that out, thanks.
cant get any of those
cant get any of those glowsticks :(
cant get any of those
Viktor, can you get them here?
http://www.voltronic.de/shop/product_info.php?language=en&info=p1191
they don't show me prices :(
they don't show me prices :(
So phenomenal!
Totally rocking creativity! Well done.
Awesome
This is very awesome. I'll have to try this very very soon!
I'm a fan now ))
I really like the effect that you created, so I tried it on my school's assignment (which was to paint the car with light with gels). Because my car is old, scrached and dented there was no way to make it look fancy so I decided to go the other way http://500px.com/photo/2467646
Exposure ??
How long is your exposure time ??
Was playing around tonight, but diddent get i all right.. my exposure time was set to "30
Stonecold
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