One of my most exciting places to do Tube Light Painting Portraits; Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
Together with Natalia Cerqueira I spent New Years Eve 2019 at the Salar. One of the results that I love the most is this piece. This is a very short exposure time of 2sec at ISO 160 F5. So you can imagine I had to move the light tubes very fast to create these shapes behind her. Also very challenging is the balance between the brightness of the tubes in direct light as well as reflection versus the sunset in the background. It’s not as perfect as I hoped but look at the reflection > that’s what I wanted that’s what I got. So in the end I am perfectly happy with the model, the light painting shape, and the insane sunset in the background.
(See the article on “Use of reflections in your photos”)
Street Lights of Shanghai
This time with a twist or better tube swing. Miko and I swinging the tubes around Eileen Zhang. This was an amazing, short but intense light painting session in May 2019. It came about very spontaneous, but so much worth meeting both.
My friend Samira and I Light Painting behind the Yu Garden Shopping Mall in Shanghai. This was particularly interesting to me because I got to get some great results with the 85mm F1.2 Canon Lens. (If you like to understand more about understanding what lens to use for Light Painting see this article.)
Very happy about it. This shot became also one of my favourite Tube Light Painting Portraits because of its depth of field.
A cold night at the Baltic sea together with Lana Panfilow. After a say; medium successful Light Painting session we went back to the parking lot and there I saw that huge puddle. Asking Lana for one more short Light Painting turned into a few of these. One from that series also got me nominated for the International Light Painting Award 2016. Also one of my favourite examples of reflections used in Light Painting (See the article on the topic if you like). Thank you Lana!
Want to see more Light Paintings? Have a look at the Light Painting Gallery
Why don’t you have a look at what’s possible with drones: Drone Light Paintings
To create more interesting vibrant Light Painting images I try to introduce a “Life” factor. We all know that if we see an image with a person its a million times more interesting than any image without. This actually adds complexity and difficulty since people or animals are no rocks. People always move and it’s very challenging since all these photos are long exposures. The shortest Tube Light Painting Portraits are made in just a view seconds (2-5 sometimes 60sec). If a performance takes longer I had exposures up to 400sec. Even more extreme was a joint effort with many other light painters we had 20min exposure time.
