The wonderful world of light painting has been a recent hit in pop culture media, ranging from photo shoots, to music videos, and even TV commercials. Close friends and avid supporters of the band, Michelle McSwain and Ryan Warnberg, have been spending the past few years perfecting the hit sensation that is light painting. Since then, their project known as M::R::I, has been a big success, attracting various types of attention and write-ups from blogs, websites, and even an interview by NPR. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term light painting, I will try my best to explain, as Wikipedia fails to give a definition worth a damn (sorry for speaking of the Wholy Wikipedia on such anti-Wick terms).
The little knowledge I have of light painting comes from an intro to photography class that Tim and I took in college. It should be sufficient enough to give any “unfamiliars” a taste of how light painting works, and if it does not, please yell at me in the comment area and give your explanation. The general idea of light painting involves setting up a camera on a tripod (to keep it steady), in the dark, and exposing the film to small sources of light, slowly, over a short period of time, almost as if you are painting onto the actual scene at hand via some unseen magical source. M::R::I experiments with various lengths of exposures but has developed a certain trend of 30 second exposures, such as the above picture that was taken in Central Park, my personal favorite. While that picture was taken using a natural source of light for the exposure, there are other techniques that actually involve the artist painting over the exposed area with some form of light, that is generally not too strong, like a small colored flashlight or a glow stick. What is actually happening is that the camera, which is steady via tripod, opens its shutter (sort of the eye of the camera if you will), and thus the film is slowly exposed to the light, over a given period of time. This allows the photographer a few moments to actually paint with their light source in the surrounding area, which will then show up when the film is developed, creating a really sweet and trippy effect that looks like real life CGI. The picture below is an actual light painting of the two artists themselves, but don’t get any ideas ladies and fellas, for they don’t just work together…
WARNING: PLEASE TRY THIS AT HOME. It is a fun experience to do with a friend, or even by yourself if you are looking for something new to try out, and with a dark room and a little practice you can get some fairly worthwhile results, maybe even impressed a friend or loved one. Light painting can be done with a film based or digital camera, it just requires knowing how to set the shutter speed for a prolonged period of time, usually between 1 and 30 seconds. All you have to do is find an extremely dark room, like a basement or bathroom, or go outside on a dark night, with a camera, tripod, and some type of instrument of light to do the actual painting. Once the camera is set up and the picture is taken, you will have as many seconds as you set your shutter speed open to actually paint with your instrument of light over the scene which you are taking the picture. The advantage of using a digital camera is that it will allow you to make various test runs, seeing your results in real time, and trying out different sources of light and exposures, until you get a fairly clear image. To get an idea of how light painting works, go into a pitch dark room with a small instrument of light, such as a lighter, keep your eyes open for a few moments and then flash on the light for 20 seconds and turn it off again. You should see some form of that light source imprinted on your field of vision, almost as if it was painted into your brain. I just tried this out and believe it or not, it actually works, for a second there I thought I was making that all up!
If you like what you see, and we know you will, please check out the official M::R::I site, by clicking the link, where you can find out old and new news regarding the recent success of Michelle’s and Ryan’s light painting phenomenon. For those of you that take a liking to light painting and want to share with us, we would gladly post your pictures, some Canon Logic based photos perhaps…
For our readers that live in the Brooklyn area, April 3rd is the next Flashing Lights Party where M::R::I will have a booth set up and you can actually get your very own light painting pictures, as the picture below depicts. If I had to go back and do it all again, the only thing I would do differently is have my High school senior picture be a light paiting portrait, instead of leaning against a silly rock and acting all tough. In fact, I might only allow light painted pictures of myself from here on out, I mean why take a photo or paint a picture when you can do both at the same time? I wonder how much M::R::I would charge to follow me around for the rest of my life, hmm? For more information about my favorite light painting duo, and their recent success, please check out their blog here.
(Below is a picture of Michelle taken at the M::R::I light painting photo booth)
