lightpainting

These Daguerreotypes Were Made by Painting Light Onto Body Parts

Chimacabres come out at night. They are around during the day too of course, but the night is when they really thrive. In the dark, it’s harder to tell if you’re face to face with a fellow person or if it’s a chimacabre in front of you, and they don’t even have faces.

These Light Painting Photos Were Shot by Splashing in Water

Light-painting photographer Denis Smith is perhaps best known for creating giant spheres of light in photos. For his latest series, titled "Liquid Light," Smith brought his light tools into waist-deep water for beautiful photos of light bursting forth from the surface.

Pictionary Air is Light-Painting Turned Into a Game

The classic charades-inspired word-guessing drawing game Pictionary is entering the digital age, and light-painting photographers will feel right at home. If you need some fun practice before you head out with your camera, the upcoming Pictionary Air involves drawing in the air with a light pen.

How to Light-Paint Giant Shapes in the Sky with a Drone

A few months ago I was inspired to try and see what shapes I could create while attaching a Lume Cube to my drone. I’d seen photographer like Phill Fisher do shapes in the sky manually and was extremely impressed, but I didn’t have the time to learn how to fly shapes manually. So instead I scoured the Web for drone apps that could make things like this possible.

Light Painting with a Paper Tube and a Shower Curtain Dress

After our flight to NYC got canceled last summer, we got stuck in Chicago for one night with no light painting tubes, no dress, no tripods, and no battery chargers. During the shuttle ride to the hotel, we started joking about using a bed sheet to fake a dress and to use whatever we could find in the hotel room as a light-painting tool.

Shoot In-Camera Zoom-Effect Double-Exposure Light-Painting Photos

Several years ago I developed a technique that I use for light painting in which I take a king size bed sheet and light paint through it to create my images. I recently created this 10-minute video tutorial explaining in detail how to achieve this creative effect.

Shooting Top-Down Light-Painting Photos Using a Drone

There are a couple of different ways to use drones for light-painting. Some people will attach LumeCubes to their drone and paint an environment with them or will fly a drone around the sky or an object and have the drones lights creating images in the sky. However, there is another way to use them that isn’t widely used yet: using the drone's camera to capture light-painting from above.

How I Shot a Light-Painting Levitation Portal Photo

My Name is Swen Cubilette, and I'm a 34-year-old photographer living in the Central Pennsylvania area. I’ve been shooting photos for about 5 years. In this article, I'll share how I shot this levitation portal photo.

Shoot Light-Painting Photos During the Day Using an ND Filter

Light-painting photography is generally done in the dark since you need long exposure times to capture moving light sources as streaks. But use can also shoot long-exposure photos in bright sunlight using a neutral density filter. Photographer Eric Paré recently did just that, experimenting with doing light-painting in afternoon daylight.

Shooting Light-Painting Portraits with a Shattered Windshield

My name is Jason Rinehart with Hartlight Photography, and I'm a light painter known around the world for my unique light painting style. I'm always in search of different creative ways to make my images I create as unique as possible, and this is by using whatever I can find to either shoot through or shoot with.

No More Light Painting Inside National Parks?

Buried within the 2016 Superintendent’s Compendium for Grand Tetons National Park & John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway is a small, pesky provision that disallows the use of strobes or other artificial light from dusk til dawn.

My Model Triggered a Lightning Self-Portrait, And She Nailed It

My model triggered this photo of herself holding a light-painting tube with lightning in the background. I did a 30-second edit of this picture at the airport in Albuquerque and posted it right away on Instagram. It went bananas.

How to Build a LED Wand Light for $30

In this 8-minute video by Macroscope Pictures, learn how to build a color changing wand light with your own two hands for only $30 in materials. For an extra 15 bucks, you can add a Wi-Fi controller and control the finished product with your phone.

Photographer Shoots Phoenix Wings by Light Painting with Fire

Photographer Derek VanAlthuis took his light painting photography to fiery new heights last week when he captured this photo. In it, his model is flying away on wings created by light painting with actual fire. In fact, that fire is the only light used in the shot.

How to Make a DIY Light Painting Brush for Cool Still Life Effects

A couple of weekends ago I was playing about with some ideas for a new portfolio shot involving a wall clock. Now, this clock happens to look a bit like a pocket watch, and a pocket watch normally has a chain (see where I'm going with this?). So I figured: "what if instead of a chain, I use some wispy light trails?"

Combining Fitness and Fire Photography

We've all seen photographs before of light trails through various forms of light painting—cars passing by, flashlights, pixelsticks, wool spinning, etc. But have you ever seen someone use fire inside a gym to create light trails?

The Pablo App Brings Light Painting Photography to the iPhone

If you're using a smartphone to capture light painting photos, the phone is usually IN the photo as a light source. But the new Pablo app lets you actually use your iPhone as the camera, capturing light trails that mimic traditional long exposure shots.

A Basic Guide to Light Painting Photography

Light painting has been a basic technique in my photography ever since I learned how to really play with it. I started by just doing the usual of writing names and doing swirls but then I learned how to use it for my professional work.

How to Create Raindrops of Light with Steel Wool

GoPro just released this 4-minute video tutorial titled "Creating Fire Rain: A Steel Wool Experiment." It's a look at how you can create raindrops of light by burning and spinning steel wool, a technique that has gotten a lot of attention (both good and bad) over the past few years.

An Experiment in Long Exposure Wildlife Photography at Night

The photo above of a wild genet is a single 73-second exposure that took many hours, tons of patience, and a bit of technology to capture. In this post, I'll share how I combined wildlife photography with light painting.