Colorful Light Painting [Photography]

Another one of my many explorations in photography is light painting. It requires a camera that is able to capture long exposures --- shutter speeds that are slow enough that the exposure is more than a second up to a few hours, maybe even more.

There are many different types of light painting photos --- some incorporate the background or landscape it is set in, others include the person who does the light painting. The type that I experimented with involve a simple dark background, so that the one and only feature in the photo would be the light painting itself.

For the following photos, I used a simple toy with colorful blinking lights that changes color rapidly.

It's a 8-buck toy that I purchased at the Kg Kuantan Fireflies Complex

I prefocused my camera to a certain distance, and set the exposure to either 5, 10 or 20 seconds, depending on how elaborate I wanted my light painting to be. I used minimal ISO (either 100 or 200) so that I don't get noise in the photo due to an underexposed background. The aperture is set to be 3.5 or above so that I don't get any bokeh effects from the lights.

Room was set to almost total darkness, for safety purposes.

Below are some selected light painting photos from my quick experimentation:

If you look carefully you can see that some might contain some bokeh effects, others are a bit overexposed. Of course, I require a lot more practice and experimentation with this technique before I really get the hang of it.

What do you think of my light paintings here? Any comments and suggestions will be very much appreciated!

Shots Using a Crude DIY Mini White Studio

For nearly six months I have been going on without a proper working speedlight as mine was burnt out. Thankfully the speedlight has been fixed and two days ago I went to pick it up at the Nikon service centre, and my SB-600 came back working like new again.

Which means I can start exploring other types of photography, ones I haven't tried yet.

One of them is white studio.

Of course, I have not the resources to go and rent a white studio for photoshoots, so I constrained the scope into capturing small objects in closeup shots.

And for that purpose, I made myself a DIY mini white studio.

The results of the shots taken in the the mini white studio:

I realize I might need to work out more on how the objects are lit in order to get a consistent infinite white background. For my first ever few shots I think they turned out ok. What do you think?

As for the mini studio, this is how it looks like:

As I said, it is quite crudely made, but it served its purpose.

What do you think of the shots? Any suggestions for improvement are very much appreciated!

[Wordless Wednesday] Frozen Cherries

Cherry covered in frozen rainwater. Ann Arbor, MI (Winter 2007)

[Mellow Yellow Monday] Dandelion - Taraxacum officinale

Yellow dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

Photo taken at Cameron Highlands, Pahang back when I first started taking photos using a DSLR. I think it is obvious how inexperienced I was back then. The focus in this photo is totally off.

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[Wordless Wednesday] Urbanites Crossing

Urbanites crossing the Tun Sambanthan Road in Kuala Lumpur.

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