Painting with Sparklers - Long-Exposure Photography (Original Photos by JVO)
A Fun Project with the Family and A little slice of Artistic Expression!
Good evening Steemit Friends! I have been seeing a lot of really cool photography on here - one recently was regarding light painting, and I realized - we have fourth of July coming up! This means I was able to get my hands on some sparklers - I haven't done a lot of long-exposure photography before - so really I just wanted to play a little. I set up my camera outside on a tripod and at about 10:30 last night we had a whole lot of fun with these sparklers. Below are tons of still photos and .gif builds of the cool stuff we created with long-exposure photography and some cheap bin sparklers - I got about 6 bundles of 5 for 4 dollars!
“In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.” – Hans Hofmann
I did a little research on light painting and learned that surprisingly, people have been experimenting with Light Photography since the late 1880's. One of my favorite artists who was notably known to have created some images using the light painting technique was Pablo Picasso. He teamed up with Gjorn Milli a renowned photographer in the late 1940's and it was there that Milli taught Picasso of the technique. Picasso was actually rather well known for his light paintings and long-exposure photography (seen below)
If you are interested in learning more about the history of light painting this article online is where my information is coming from: Light Painting Photography.com
I grabbed the sparklers from a local stand that set up for the holiday - I live in a state where they are illegal - but they turn an eye for the little stuff for the holiday. Places like South Carolina allow you to set them off pretty much year round - but in NC they are off limits all other times of year except for the ones sold on and around the 4th of July. I personally think it seems a bit silly - but whatever.
Using the lasso tool and some masking I clipped parts of the photo apart and made them move across the screen. Making the .gifs from the original photographs is tedious to say the least - I have worked on all the images & gifs for this post all day long - since about 9 AM. But I think the patience paid off and I am really excited about the final results in this one. :)
Well that wraps up all the images I created from this fourth of July related activity! I hope you enjoyed my work - if you guys have any cool long-exposure work that you would like to share please, do so below :)
As always, please re-steem if you think this post was worth sharing, comment if you have a question or something you would like to share and follow if you would like to see more of my shenanigans!
@j-vo
If you'd like to see more of my work:
Here are a few posts I made over this past week:
Six Sad Stories: See Illustration 3: "We kissed. She melted. Mop please." - James Patrick Kelly
Six Sad Stories: See Illustration 4: "Corpse Parts Missing - Doctor Buys Yacht." - Margaret Atwood
150+ Followers - I am beyond words! Thank you Steemit Community!!
Le Chant Chaton - Illustrated Wine Labels by J-VO
Happy Fourth of July - An Independence Day Painting by J-VO
Steem Wars - Day 4: Color Challenge - Tuesday Orange - Original Photos by J-VO - TeamUSA
Steem Wars - Day 5: Color Challenge - Wednesday Yellow - Original Photos by J-VO - TeamUSA
Six Sad Stories: See Illustration 5: "It's Behind You - Hurry Before it" - Rockne S. O’Bannon
Steem Wars - Day 6: Color Challenge - Thursday Green - Photos by J-VO - Team USA
All photography and creative artwork displayed in this post were created by @j-vo.
That...was..so... amazing !!! I got so into it
LOL! Thank you @journeyoflife! The thundercloud and the steemit ones at the bottom were the funnest to make - I'm glad you enjoyed them :) Thank you for reading & your support !
Anytime (:
Wow those are some nice light paintings! I definitely want to try it again! Thanks for the share :D Upvoted!
Thank you! Yours were really cool too!! I'm gonna try some other stuff too, now that we are warmed up on the concept it is time to stretch it and see what else can be done!
Amazing. I've never done this before but it looks like a lot of fun. :) Thanks for sharing!
It was a lot of fun, you should definitely try it! ;)
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STOPWhat a great idea! And I love how much you committed to it and how far you took it.
The drawings remind me of the contour drawing exercises we used to do in art class, where you're not allowed to lift the pen from the paper and you have to trace the form as quickly as you can. Light painting must be especially challenging as you can't really see what you've put down until you check the exposure.
Thank God for digital cameras, though. Imagine having to take this to the photomat and wait for prints before you could see how they came out!
Re-steeming because this really deserves more exposure. (Actually you've got more followers than me but every little bit helps, right?)
@Winstonalden - thank you SO much for the support I genuinely do appreciate the re-steem! My followers are growing but the interraction has been dropping - so every little bit DOES help!
Thank you for recognizing the efforts that went into this - I spent all day the next day after we spent several hours capturing these fun images - editing and creating the fun gifs. I was hoping people would think they were cool.
Yes, I have done the tradiitional darkroom photography course in College where you have to do a lot of night photography and boy was it tricky 12 years ago when I only had my film SLR. I struggled. But now, digital has really helped me to understand the physics behind what is happening with each adjustment - and it really helps to solidify the concept of what I am trying to achieve with each setting. Thank God - whoever invented the Digital Camera definitely gets a ticket to heaven - or whatever awesome place they feel they go to when they leave here - lol!
I remember the contour drawings in Figure Drawing - I was such a nerd that I used to go to the Figure Drawing club sessions outside of regular classes because I love drawing people so much. The exercises they would have us do were really fun and definitely invited a lot of expression in the drawings which was fun to see - usually we all tend to be so rigid - so perfect (another thing digital art has opened and relieved from the artist's worry).
Thanks for taking the time to read and review - I appreciate your support!! :D
The digital can be so liberating, can't it?
It's the same with writing. We used to have to keep a wastepaper basket ready for our bad ideas. Now we have the "delete" key.
LOL I know - or whiteout so you could re-type over it with the type-writer :) I used to love using my mom's
Cool! I bet you had fun doing it! Here you can see my post on the same topic :)
Awesome - I took a look and wow - very informative! I want to go out and try to push my ideas a bit further - this was more of a warm up exercise lol - especially for the kids - I don't think they quite understood what I was wanting them to do and what the result would be at first - but once they saw the outcomes they kind of started to catch on and push themselves a bit. I just wanted to do something very specific for steemit but I want to go out and try something a bit more high-end artistic if that makes any sense.. lol Thanks for commenting and checking it out!
Thanks :D it was my master's thesis theme so I made a really big research and the work put into this was huge. I was satisfied at the and really sleepy from all the nights spent photographing hehe