Photographing light trails and graffiti
One of the really cool features of DSLRs is the ability to keep the shutter open for extended periods of time, which gives you the ability to play around with light to great effect. I’ve had fun experimenting with light trails and “light graffiti”. Here’s how I got on, and a few tips I picked up on the way.
Cars are excellent for photographing light trails; they’re fast and, at night, emit good strong light. The first time I tried this I didn’t have a tripod with me which is a nightmare given how long the exposure is. I was completely unable to hold the camera steady enough to avoid camera shake. However, going back with a gorillapod allowed me to fix the camera to an overpass and snap the vehicles below. I used my camera’s Tv (Time Value) setting to get a good long exposure but found that the action of pressing the shutter release was causing a bit of vibration. The solution was to use the camera’s timer to press the release, step back, and I would then get a good steady shot. The final shot of cars passing underneath was taken with an exposure time of 20 seconds and a bit of experimentation with the ISO number and aperture so that it didn’t overexpose and look very washed out.
What would I do differently next time? Well, I’d like to take a shot from the roadside so that the lights are much closer to the camera, and I hear that busses are excellent for this because they give off a load of light. Perhaps a trip to the local bus station is in order!
The second thing I wanted to try was “light graffiti”. This is the art of drawing in the air using a torch and a long-exposure shot. So, in the darkness of my house, I set the camera up with a small aperture and a long (30 second) exposure time. The camera’s timer was used to give me a few seconds to get round to the front for the drawing and a small hand torch was used to provide the light. The trick here was to remember to keep the torch pointing at the camera as much as possible (it wasn’t very powerful), and to remember to switch it off wherever there’s meant to be a gap in the line! Oh, and you need to write backwards if you want it to come out the right way out in the photo, although you could always reverse the image in photoshop if you do it the wrong way round.
If I were doing this again I would like to use a different kind of torch, as my LED torch gives a very white light. Incandescent bulbs give a warmer light, but maybe I could just change the colour by sticking some coloured film on the LED torch.
There’s loads you can do with this, light and long exposures give you so many opportunities to be creative. If you’re outdoors you can outline street furniture (like post boxes or benches) in light, or you can try different light sources (like glow-sticks) to achieve different results.
Have you tried photographing light trails or graffiti? Why not post some examples of your work in the comments, and give us some hints and tips? I think this is a fantastic technique, and would love to know how others have got on, and how this can be done even better. And if you have any questions, post them in the comments section too!
If you enjoyed reading this why not buy me a coffee?