Light painting with the Pixelstick in Washington DC.

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As a photographer sometimes we have to seek quality over quantity. Visiting Washington DC is one of those trips where you have to be selective. In just 1 museum you can literally spend a week trying to see everything.

So all that being said - we were only in town for a day and a half and I wanted to do something special. I decided to bring what’s called a Pixelstick. I knew I was going to get a lot of questions like “how did you do that?” so I figured I make a behind the scenes video.

The cool thing about the Pixelstick is that you can load any image you want! As for the process:

1 - Do a countdown as to how long the image takes to play.
2 - Set a shutter speed and add a few seconds. So if an image is 6 seconds, I’ll use an 8 second shutter speed. Chose a low iso and as for the aperture decide how bright or dark you want the image to be and adjust accordingly.
3 - Put something on the floor so the person holding the Pixelstick can start at the same spot every time.
4 - Pre focus and then set the camera to manual focus.
5 - When your parter is ready and says go - use a remote to trigger the camera.
6 - Rinse and repeat!

Ideally you want it to be dark behind the image, if not it’ll get lost with the brightness (as in the Street Fighter image in the video). It also helps to have a flat surface as if it’s uneven the image will be wobbly.

It also helps to scout out locations beforehand so you’re more efficient with your time. Earlier in the day we rented bikes and looked for the perfect spots. According to the bike share app, Justin and I covered 80 miles!

If you love shooting at night as much as I do the Pixelstick is a cool toy to have in your bag of tricks. I probably use it only a handful of times throughout the year as it’s tricky to use - in terms of having a steady handed person moving the Pixelstick. It also takes a patient person and someone who can follow simple directions - lol.

If nothing else, it will help inspire people to get into photography as it never ceases to blow people’s minds! People always ask what are we doing and when people see the art we’re creating they’re like “holy s***”.

And speaking of people asking what are we doing, when we started the video we got questioned by a police officer then detained by a secret service officer as what we were doing looked very unusual. Plus it didn’t help that the President of the United States was about to be flying in the area!

Throughout the week I’ll be sharing more long exposure image we took and if you liked this post be sure to resteem!

Thanks - HUGS

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