Awesome Long-exposure

You can create some amazing visuals by shooting long exposures. COOPH teamed up with Brazilian artist and photographer Vitor Schietti for a brief series of eight ideas to help up your night time photo and light painting game. We like how he goes beyond through-the-lens techniques and delves into his creative process.

Moving a point source light in front of a camera set to shoot long exposures can produce some cool visuals. The guys at COOPH show off a few other ways that low-budget lighting sources can be used to shoot unique and creative photographs.

Builder Tom Stanton attached a long vertical LED light bar to his drone, and managed to fly it horizontally to capture some cool long-exposure images. His design is based on Ivan Miranda’s light bar, but you might be able to pull off something similar with a Pixelstick.

Photographer Jens Heidler of Another Perspective is always showing off great ideas for shooting your own creative photos. In this clip, he reveals some simple tricks you can do using sparklers and a power drill to bring light, energy, and motion to images.

By using a similar mechanism to the ones used in 3D printers, maker Josh Sheldon created an amazing robotic rig which can be used to guide a light source along a precise path. The result are some of the most beautifully smooth long-exposure light paintings we’ve ever seen.

Long-exposure photographer Darren “Darius Twin” Pearson’s eye-catching clip features a wonderful interplay between its beautiful female star and the lights that gather around her, as she conjures flowers, cacti, stars, and dancing skeletons in the dark of night.

It may take less than seconds to get through the main sequence in Darren and Jordan Pearson’s light painting video, but it took significantly more time, effort, and planning to draw each of its 300 long-exposure frames by moving colored lights by hand.

Photographer Darren “Darius Twin” Pearson created this eye-catching video which uses long-exposures and Night-Writer light paintings to bring skeletons to life as they dance to the jazzy track Tarova by Snarky Puppy (not to be confused with Skinny Puppy.)

The Mad Track Brothers put some flammable cargo on a Hot Wheels car, then let it loose to spin through numerous loops on their twisty Darda track. It’s a cool idea, but the best part is the long-exposure image they captured of the car’s fiery ride. More here.

Rob Nelson and Jonas Stenstom from Untamed Science demonstrate how to capture amazing long-exposure photographs using steel wool, a 9-volt battery, a chain, and an egg beater to create a cool visual effect that looks like rain made from fire. More here.

This promo spot for Australia’s Holden Astra by GMUNK and The Creators Project used a combination of illuminated quadcopters and a car outfitted with extra lights to create some cool abstract long-exposure light paintings.

Individual light paintings take a lot of time and effort to pull off. So a light painted music video is a real feat. Darcy Prendergast of Oh Yeah Wow spent 6 months making this video for All India Radio.