Friday Night Light Painting

Light painting can be a little trippy and a lot of fun.  Al you need is a dark place, a tripod, and a narrow-beam flashlight or two.  Set up a long exposure and a tiny aperture, and start waving those lights around.  You will notice right away how tricky it can be to make a composed drawing, where various elements need to be lined up to others.  I won't even show you my attempts to play tic-tac-toe...

I chose to completely black out the background so that I wasn't visible at all behind the lights.  If you want to see some of the person behind the lights, you can open up the aperture a bit, or try some side lighting on the person, shielded so that the light doesn't reach the camera directly.  The light will need to hit the person only - otherwise you lose the impact of your "paint". 

There are tons of resources out there to inspire and educate you on light painting.  One of the coolest is this murder-and-mayhem video.  They have a great BTS clip posted as well. 

Canon 5D Mark II

65mm - ISO 200

30s - f/32