The photograph above is reportedly the world’s largest piece of long-exposure light art. It was created by light painter Michael Bosanko in a 35,000-square-foot aircraft hangar in Coventry airport in October 2012.
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We’ve shared a few pretty cool cross-section light painting projects before, but none of them were ever very… shall we say… cheery. Both projects — 21:31 and Andy Leach’s hologram photo — were created using the same eerie video of human slices from the Visible Human Project. But for those who wanted to toy around with cross-section light painting and re-creating 3D light objects in their photos, that’s all they had.

Well, not anymore. Photographer Hugo Baptista has put together a Vimeo group called “Cross Section Objects for Light Painting“. It contains a number of videos that you can load onto your tablet or smartphone and use to create 3D light painting objects.
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For their project 24×360, Patrick Rochon, Timecode Lab, and Eric Paré combined a 360-degree “bullet time” rig with light painting and produced some pretty sweet results. The short teaser above shows some of the pieces they created.
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After seeing an online tutorial on steel wool light painting, photographer Simon Berger found a friend to model for him and went out to try his hand at the technique. After some initial success, he started brainstorming creative ideas that he hadn’t seen before. The result of the brainstorming was this stunning shot that makes the sparks from a burning piece of steel wool look like rain falling on an umbrella.
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In 1993, a convicted murderer named Joseph Paul Jernigan was executed. Having donated his body to science, his body was sliced to provide 1,871 high-resolution cross-section photographs of human anatomy in what is known as the Visible Human Project.

Last year we shared a project called 12:31, in which two photographers used an animation of the cross-section slices to photograph ghostly figures through light-painting. Inspired by that project, photographer Andy Leach recently used the animation for a shoot of his own: he recreated Jernigan’s body as a hologram.
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Based in San Francisco, Kim Pimmel is a photographer, a user interface designer, a DJ, and a “maker.” Take a look at his experimental light painting photographs, and you’ll see each of these interests shining through. Pimmel has spent years experimenting with long exposure photographs that show different light sources as brushes. His beautiful images are created using custom rigs and common objects — things like turntables, ping pong balls, fiber optic cables, pendulums, iPhone screens, and more.
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Tom Lacoste is a 23-year-old self-taught photographer based out of Bordeaux in Southern France. While most people do light painting using flashlights, sparklers, and perhaps flaming steel wool if they’re adventurous enough, Lacoste chooses to photograph flames. Large flames.
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3D light painting can be done by using a 2D image rather than a single point of light. In the past, we’ve shared creative examples of iPads being used in this way to light paint everything from ghostly figures to creative animations.

The video above, created for the recent launch of McLaren’s new P12 super car, takes this screen-based 3D light painting concept to the next level.
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Sonia Soberats’ journey in photography didn’t start until she couldn’t see the photographs she was producing. Around two decades ago, she lost her eyesight to glaucoma between losing her son to Hodgkin’s disease and her daughter to ovarian cancer. At the turn of the century, Soberats began taking photography lessons in New York City as a form of therapy and self-expression. Her technique of choice? Light painting.
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Light painting has become quite trendy as a photography project as of late, but it’s by no means a new idea. The earliest known light painting photos were created back in 1914, and the technique has been employed by countless photographers over the years — including Pablo Picasso in 1949.

Another artist to use light painting decades ago was American artist Eric Staller. In the 1970s, Staller would roam the streets of New York City, armed with a Nikon 35mm SLR camera, some 4th of July sparklers, and a set of Christmas lights. The surreal light art he created at the time is better than many of the light painting efforts seen these days with the latest and greatest digital cameras.
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