Continuing with this months project these are the photos I took this week in New York’s Long Island CIty and Astoria areas. Click on the images for a larger version.

For February I wanted to focus on some of the NYC decay that I’ve been seeing around more and more. In this first post I wanted to show you some of the Coney Island scenes that I’ve seen. I think Coney Island is one of the biggest blights on New York. It used to be a big draw for the city, an area that could attract people to it’s natural beauty, theme park, boardwalk and more. It’s just a shame that they have let it come to this.

So light painting has become something of a sore subject in my house. I’ve been trying to come up with some ideas for what to shoot this week and have been having a hard time. I’ve thought about tracing objects, mimicking shapes, hinting at shapes and more but nothing seemed too interesting. I’d sit up for hours thinking about ideas and hoping they would come out the way I hoped. I was scoping locations when I was riding the train to work and thinking of ways to make things work when I had free time. All of this was not that much help when I went to shoot.

So I finally decided to do some object mimicking this week, what I mean by that was to take an object and try to add some light painting to it but in a way that I was mimicking the look or feel of the object. What I decided on was a local bridge here in NY where there are lots arches in a row. I went to go shoot it one evening this week, I got there are got my camera set up on the tripod, got the cable release hooked up and the scene lined up the way I wanted it. Everything was going well at this point, but it only went downhill from here. I clicked the shutter and went jogging up the hill to start mimicking the first arch then the second then the third. I came running back to the camera let go of the cable release and waited anxiously for the preview…

It was ugly on that little 2.5in LCD screen, not that it should be perfect but it was lacking anything that I would call interesting. I had a gigantic object taking lots of the interest in the scene and some off center, off pitch, off interest light painting that was just not cutting it. I was demoralized, the shot I wanted was bad and looking at the results of even the first shot told me I would not be getting the grandiose shot I wanted but I had to try a few more things any way. I switched to a bigger light, one that would give me more reach and maybe give me more depth with the lights. It was not to be, it did give some extra depth but not enough and the area where I had to work was off center enough to make the shot seem thrown together rather then properly planned. I knew I would not get what I wanted.

I didn’t want to give up so I took a look around and thought about what else I could do, there was a path. A cobble stone path that wound up the hill with a traffic cone near by, I starting to think maybe it would work but I didn’t yet know how. So thinking about what I could do with this little path and cone and I came up with a simple idea that was not the most interesting but had some promise. I decided upon walking up and down the path with the light on to trace the outside of the path and then at the top of the path to vertically trace the cone. This came out ok but it was nothing I would want to publish other then to this site so you can see what I’m talking about.

Overall I’m starting to see that light painting is maybe not for me, I like to shoot the shot that is present. Light painting is about what you can do with the lights along with some of what you see when you get there. To some this may present a bigger challenge and a way to express something more personal, something they create. For me however it can become distracting of the real reason I came out, to photograph. I am still undecided about how I want to proceed from here for next week, so if you have ideas let me know or I may skip it and start next months project.

Continuing on with this months project of Light Painting I set out to do a few things this week. First I wanted to identify the types of shots I wanted to take and what I thought would make for some cool photos. Second I wanted to scope a few locations and take some test shots to see if what I wanted was possible and if my assumptions were right.

Thinking about the types of light painting pictures I have seen I felt they really fit into a few categories -

• Only Light Paining – This is where the only thing in the picture is the light painting. Personally I feel like unless you can make some really cool patterns with your lights or have a great idea for how the lights will look this has the highest probability of a boring type of light painting shot. Now if you can make some cool patterns you could get some very cool shots.



• Mainly Light Painting – This is where you can see some of the surrounding picture, it’s more of a full picture then just light painting but the main point is still the light painting. To me this feels like a more interesting use of light painting. It forces you to think about both the normal night shot and the light painting. It makes for a great multi faceted shot that can be much more interesting.



• Light Painting Accent – A normal night shot with some aspect of light painting included. To me this can be just as much if not more interesting the last option and usually more interesting then just a shot of light painting.

Moving on to scoping a location and what I was looking for, were back to a few common sense ideas for what to keep your eyes open for and some ideas that I think could be cool.

• Watch out for bright street lights, these can be hard to deal with especially when you have a much darker scene in general.
• In my area there are some bright electronic billboards these can give you photo a weird light cast depending on what they are displaying at the moment. Not always bad but just something to be aware of.
• Busy streets, car lights can ruin a light painting shot, so beware.
• The sketchy guy walking down the street in the bad area of town your probably in right now. This is just common sense but keep an eye on your surroundings, you have expensive camera gear and are probably attracting more attention then you think.
• Something cool to include in your picture if you want it. In my shot from this week I found a really cool underpass that was light slightly and the Empire State Building in the background.

Hey all,
So I wanted to start something new here on Knowphoto in 2010, so I came up with the idea to focus on a cool aspect of photography for a month. I feel this will allow me to give you some great ideas along with some of the best photographs of the subject I’m talking about. So to begin 2010 I thought we would kick everything off by trying something fun and out of the normal, light painting!

Definition –
Light painting, also known as light drawing or light graffiti is a photographic technique in which exposures are made usually at night or in a darkened room by moving a hand-held light source or by moving the camera. In many cases the light source itself does not have to appear in the image.

Equipment  -
The tools I’m using include Cathode Ray Tubes, which are more or less a Neon light but are not as breakable.  To get these tubes portable I’ve had to invest in some battery holders, some 9 volt battery adapters and a soldering iron.  This all makes for one portable light beam, exactly what you’ll want to start doing light painting.  

Next I’ve rigged up a short set of Christmas lights on a wire clothes hanger so we have what looks like a long stick, these lights were already battery operated so you can pick these up from your local store. Last but not least I’ve also got some flashlights I’m planning on using.

So once all this building and testing of the equipment was done I did some test pictures in the apartment just to see what everything would look like.

I’ll be investigating light painting more in the next three weeks, so if you have any questions or would like me to try to get a specific shot please feel free to leave a comment or email me. In the mean time get out there and try you hand at light painting.