I found this guy on Flickr that's giving me a TON of ideas. If anyone wants to help, let me know! It could be prettttyyy cool.
Check him out, though!
Light Writing: Typically pretty easy, however, it's one of those things you definitely need to think out before hand, especially if you've never done it before. A lot of things can go wrong:
1.) While you're 'writing' your light source may at times turn away from the camera and will not get captured, so in the final photo your drawing has gaps
2.) Incorrect exposure. You need to use a really long shutter speed to do these--if your point and shoot camera has an M setting (Manual) or S (shutter speed/priority) then you have to use one of those. I mostly do these by myself so I usually put my shutter speed to 30 seconds to give plenty of time.
3.) Blur---use a freaking tripod!! Since it's a long exposure your camera has to stay still!
4.) Over exposure: The longer your shutter is open, the more light comes into your camera. If the room you're in isn't fully dark and you put your shutter to half a minute, then your picture is going to come out super bright and you won't see the light writing. At times like these you have to compensate---if you can change your ISO put it on the smallest number possible (100?). If you're shooting under Manual, bump up your Aperture to a bigger number (16, or 22) (changing both ISO/Aperture will guarantee a darker photo). As you practice you can adjust these as need be.
5.) Unfocused. You may think it doesn't matter if streaks of light are in focus, but personally I think it does. And being in a dark place doesn't really help your camera in finding something to focus on. Try putting your camera on self timer, turn the lights on in the room, go to your chosen spot and then press the shutter button on your camera or have someone do it for you. The self timer will blink and you'll have plenty of time to run and turn the lights off and go back to your exact spot before the camera opens the shutter.
You'll notice in your photos that you may show up as a big blur in them. The light you're using will often spill back onto you, illuminating your hand/arm/whatever while you're taking the exposure. You can fix this by cutting a hole in the middle of a paper plate (the size of the flashlight handle if that's what you're using) and then paint the front of the plate black, so that when the light bounces back onto the plate you wont see this giant white thing.
If you're taking the photo of someone light writing, you can do a few things to put them IN the photo.
1.) You can choose to do this at the beginning/end of the exposure, it's up to you, but you can (if your camera has the option) put your flash on REAR. This means when the exposure is done, your camera will flash and can capture your friend standing beside their work.
2.) Flick the lights on for a few seconds during the exposure. You'll have to experiment, but it works.
3.) 'Paint' over your friend with another flashlight from behind the camera. Again, it takes experimenting to see how much light you'll want and what's too much, but it will be worth it.
Hope this helps!!
Oh, my bad--if there are two of you making this photo (one behind the camera, one drawing) then it's often better to set your camera to BULB (B). If it has the setting. Mine, I have to put the dial to M for Manual, then I have go backwards thru all the shutter speeds (2 seconds, 16 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, etc) until the last thing it comes to, which is Bulb. This means you have to keep your finger on the shutter button holding it down for however long you want your exposure to be. That way you don't have to wait the extra time if you finish early on say, a 30 second exposure. Hope this makes sense.
Erin.
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