Light Painting

RESEARCH

Came across this image from Evan of Photoextremist.com when researching Light Painting Photography on YouTube Orbs - Light Painting Photography Tutorial. The photo stood out as being unique, well composed, placements of the variety of colours and of course the multi-colored orb in mid-ground. I find the tutorial easy and clear to follow and motivational which has prompted me to try and replicate this photo.

FORM
Drove out to Henderson rather than Queen Street store of Surplustronics.co.nz in Auckland to look at buying a cylinder magnifying glass for a setup I'm putting together for macro photography but came across these Outdoor String Lights - with AutoTimer - Blue which was on my list to buy. I brought it home

I installed the supplied 3 x AA batteries and went through the 8 pre-programmed sequences and everything seems fine. I wound the 8-meter wire into a compact state so that all the 80 LED lights were all concentrated together using electrical tape to help bind the lights tightly together. A meter or so of wire was left out and a strong line was attached to the compacted lights which ran along the meter or so wire left out for this purpose. The strong line is taped along the wire to take up the wire tension up to where the switch box is. This will form the swing line but the length is set to suit. A dry test run went smoothly, swinging the line and getting used to the weight and learning to swing on the spot.

 

I had thought that keeping the 6 lights on the swing wire was a good idea but they formed circular streaks around the orb. NA: The yellow line is the swing line that takes up the slack of the wire and I have rubber bands keeping the battery and timer pack together as the screws weren't doing the job properly. Everything is tightly bound together with orange electrical tape.
My Tripod was used to stabilise the long exposure to eliminate motion blur along with my 24mm wide angle Tamron lens on my Canon 60D DSLR.
SETTING;
Manual
Tv; 30s
Av; f4
ISO; 100

SELF-DIRECTED

My Grandson came out to the front of the house to help me with my project and I let him have a go at swinging the fairy lights. We had several practices at creating light orbs which turned out to be fun and sometimes hilarious. On reviewing the finished product, I found several factors that could help with improving with my next light orb project but on a whole with minimum effort, it turned out well.

1. The 6 light on the swing wire will definitely need to be taped away as it formed unwelcomed streaks.

2. The ambient light from the street lamps reflected off the house hindered on the isolated atmosphere I was seeking.

3. Need to add coloured gels over some of the bound fairy light to create different coloured light in one orb.

4. I will try the BULB Mode to give me long shutter opening to action more swings.

5. I will try experimenting with the aperture setting to see if I can get a sharper light streak.

6. Will need to scout for better-isolated location and make the effort to compose my photo and add some coloured gel lights to the surroundings and background.
7. Will make more fairy light swing line but will make the smaller about half the size of the last project with white lights and several coloured gels.
8. Will experiment with and fabricate other light brushes and orb making wheel gadgets.

CONTENT
Learning night photography
Learning long exposure
Learning light orb photography
Learning how to make led fairy light swing line.

CONTEXT
Practising and Learning Long Exposure, Light Orb, Light Painting Photography.
In preparation for a future photo shoot, I am planning overseas.