Fun in the Dark – (Writing with Light experiment)
This was my first attempt at writing with light on a long exposure using an LED torch/flashlight, directly towards the camera. Of course I accidentally wrote a mirror image of what I actually wanted to write. 🙂
The actual “text writing” time during the exposure would have been about 10-15 seconds, ….out of the total exposure time of 120 seconds.
Notice my ghostly glowing face beneath the middle letter.
shutter – 120 secs
aperture – f8
ISO – 100
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This is my second attempt at writing with light on a long exposure using an LED torch. The actual “text writing” time during the exposure would again have been about 10-15 seconds, out of the total exposure time of 120 seconds.
shutter – 120 secs
aperture – f8
ISO – 100
Give this technique a go, …you can get some very strange effects happening! 😉
Photography by Jim Worrall 
How’d you do that?
November 7, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Hi Sue (ladrohan),
It’s fairly straight forward to set up.
You put your camera on a tripod and configure the camera to take a long exposure. In my case I used a shutter time of 120 seconds using an external timer, however you can still get usable results using a 30 second exposure as long as you move fast.
During the exposure you simply stand in the frame and write in the air with your flashlight/torch facing towards the camera.
As long as you keep moving then your body wont appear in the finished image. Wearing dark coloured clothes helps to keep you invisible too.
November 7, 2008 at 9:33 pm
I managed to achieve some quite cool effects with this idea with a 15″ exposure on a somewhat smaller scale:
http://tr.im/8p66
Very interesting technique, tracing lines with lights and long exposure.
January 18, 2009 at 2:51 am