Shantell Powell

Light Painting:



Here's a demonstration of how he made the light-painted skeletons.




This light-painted stop motion animation has less focus on the light and more upon what it illuminates.

Ctenophora (Stop Motion Light Painting) from Alex McLaren on Vimeo.

I also love the work being done by Amanda Palmer (and Edward KaSpel).





And I can't talk about stop motion animation without referencing Ray Harryhausen, of course!



And here's a first-person view of diving, which might translate well into stop motion animation.

I went into the studio to do my first lightpainting in over a decade. The last time I did lightpainting, I shot on film. Today was my first time doing it with a digital camera. Kyle volunteered to be my model. I told him to dress however he liked for the shot, so he chose to go as a character he plays at the Fantasy Alive LARP. He did his own makeup and costuming.

I had a difficult time in the studio, at first. I'm still not very comfortable with using my DSLR camera, but fortunately for me, Dave came along and helped me figure out the aperture settings, delayed trigger, and long exposure settings. I used my terrible tripod which is a rickety, almost useless thing. It will only let me shoot in landscape mode, and any kind of jostling might knock it over. I seriously need to get a better tripod.

The next issue I had to deal with was the light pollution in the photo studio. Despite being told that the studio would be nice and dark, this was not the case. There is a wall phone with a lit display and there are are significant gaps around the door. I did the best I could do with draping stuff over all the light sources. I didn't get the perfectly black room that I wanted, but it was close enough for my long exposures.

The next thing I had to do was rig up some flashlights for light painting. I had two flashlights and an iPhone to use. Without augmentation, the lights were too diffused. So we made paper casings for the two flashlights, and Dave fashioned a little paper box that fit over his iPhone. He made a gobo with that paper box, and we were set. The other source of light I used for my shots was an array of seven tea light candles.

(Unless otherwise noted, all the photos here are raw and unedited.)





When we finally had the room set up the way I wanted, I got Kyle to sit in a chair and I focused the camera upon him. With Dave's assistance with one flashlight, we began experimenting with double-faced images. He lit Kyle's face on one side, then turned out the light. Kyle turned his head to face the other direction, and I painted his face with my light. Here are a couple of the images from this series.





I next tried a long exposure shot with just the candles and no movement. This is a ten-second shot, if I remember correctly.



Satisfied that I knew what I was doing with the camera now, Dave left, and I finished off the shoot doing all the lighting myself. I decided to try light painting with the array of candles and got some excellent effects with it.

This next shot is the only one I did any post-process work on. All I did was adjust the brightness and contrast.





Lastly, I did light painting with just one flashlight. Here are my two favourite shots with this technique.





I still do not understand how to use the studio lighting and will need assistance figuring that out, but I feel competent with long exposure shots and light painting.