DIYPhotography.net

You know what you get when you cross programming and photography? Kick bottoms light painting. A year ago today we featured Michael Ross's (a.k.a. TxPilot) Digital Light Wand. It is a wonderful Arduino based tool that creates pictures in mid air.

Well, Michael is at it again. Yesterday Michael released his tutorial for a programmable Orb. (click here if you need an orb primer).

Similarly to the wand, the Programmable LED Orb Tool (o.k. you are PLOT from now on)... so similarly to the wand, the PLOT takes any bitmap or jpg image and converts it to a pattern that Arduino can understand. Click to continue ›

Photographer and light painting extraordinaire TigTab (who makes beautiful light stencil images) sent a light bat flying all over the word.

Well, actually, it is a bat light stencil (similar to the stencil tigtab made a tutorial for in the past, only this one is collapsible - see new tutorial after the jump).

The bat stencil will travel some 50,000 miles and visit 28 light painters in what I think is the biggest light painting chain letter in the history of man.

The bat, friendly named TAD started his travel in Australia almost 2 years ago and is still wondering the world. If you wanna follow the bat around (or join in on some of the next traveling stencils, check out the Light Stencil Central flickr group. (Or check the F-light of the Night flickr group to see the original bat travels)

And now, how to make a fordable light box tutorial (the stencil instructions can be found here) Click to continue ›

A while back I was too cheap (lazy?) to get around to purchasing some speedlights and in typical DIY fashion for me, I figured I could replicate most results using nothing more than a flashlight. So one evening with my friend Sean and his wife, we decided to try out some long exposure light painting ideas.

To be clear, the term "light painting" is often used to describe painting light onto an image where the bulb is visible, and used to create something visual in the final result. This is NOT what I am referring to here. I've seen plenty that are nice, but I don't personally have much interest in doing this: Click to continue ›

If you are doing any extensive light painting work, especially if you are doing it alone, you know that one of the more annoying things about it is triggering your camera.

You could always use the timer, or the intervalometer, but for more complex stuff timing of both the camera and starting the tools becomes harder and harder.

Some cameras have an infra red remote, but the distance is pretty limited.

Sawo of Enlightpaintment came up with a pretty neat solution, they use a garage door opener remote from eBay with Canon's 2.5 mm trigger jack to create a 150ft camera remote that is capable of both focusing and triggering. See the tutorial after the jump. Click to continue ›

One of the more interesting things to see in this era (aside a healthy big mac) is an ongoing synergy between light painting and rapid prototyping platforms like arduino and NXT Lego sets.

The Lightplot, created by Ben Cowell-Thomas, is a light painting robot that started as an NXT experiment and evolved into a huge project involving a massive robotic arm, a animation to movement software and a tiny LED.

The software is cool enough to control both the camera shutter and the robotic arm to create wonderful light painting animations. (Kinda like sticking an LED strip on a telescope mount on steroids)

Here is a quick demo of its capabilities followed by a short behind the scenes video

Click to continue ›

If you've done any light painting, you must know the Orb. Usually you create an orb by rotating a string with a light at the end while doing a little spin. Round? yes! Perfect? No! What if you wanted perfect?

Hugo Baptista Took this to a whole new level by making his orbs with a drill attached to a Telescope mount. Here is his story about creating the tool. Isn't it perfect?

Click to continue ›

Steel wool light painting is one of the most rewarding forms of light painting. It's fun to make (anyone said playing with fire), easy to plan and results are spectacular.

I thought it would be fun to host Ben at the DIYP studio and do a walkthrough of a steel wool light painting shoot we did while he was visiting here.

RSS readers, click here to see the video Click to continue ›

One of the best ways to make interesting light painting is to get a piece of steel wool on a string and spin it around on a long exposure (see tutorial here).

While we always warn folks to be cautious and wear goggles and long sleeves while spinning a piece of burning metal we never actually talked about camera safety.

Photographer Jon Beard learned that the lens needs to be protected as well the hard way. One of the sparks from the spinning wool hit his $2,000 Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G glass and stuck on the front element. Hit the jump for more details and a lens close up. Click to continue ›

If you thought that the physics behind light painting involves photon accumulation, advanced sensor technology and high end buffer management, you have it all wrong.

The truth of the thing, as Destin explains, is that light painting is done by cute girls throwing beads at boxes. OK, it does not, but Destin and daughter (and Wes Whaley) do a terrific job and explaining all this stuff in a fun and super easy to understand way. (Plus you get to see some of the most unique pregnancy photoshoots ever). Hit the jump to see the full video. Click to continue ›

Sometimes the most amazing things happen when you leave your shutter open for a long duration. Especially if you do it in the rain, while pointing a 200 mW Laser across it.

Click to continue ›