Painterly Effects

[gdavidson]

Thank you Sledger and Burpee for your kindness.

There's so much I could show - here's a few random pics, all taken locally. The castle one was lightpainted with a torch and a 30 second exposure - it was rather scary in the dark!

[gdavidson]

And a few more...

[steve.ledger]

Stunning work Graeme - absolutely stunning.

Professional stuff.

Tell me more about LightPainting please.

[gdavidson]

I'm really glad you like them Sledger.

Lightpainting can used be where it is so dark that the shutter can be left open long enough to use a torch to light up the areas you want to have lit up in the photo. In the castle one, it was a 30 second exposure and I scanned the torch light left to right across the front of the building. Think of it like spraying paint!

Avoiding tungsten lighting (can be a bit too orange), I use powerful LED torches with a fairly neutral white output so as not to cast a horrible blue cast. Another key thing is to choose a torch with a fairly uniform wide area beam as too focused a beam will result in very patchy uneven lighting.

I attempted a fairly large castle last night but my efforts were spoiled by light pollution from a nearby town making the starry sky orange. I couldn't really compensate for this without turning the castle electric blue! I had to go away with a fairly mediocre sepia effort that I'm not happy with - below...

Now if I had deep blue skies and a moon in there to light up the sea behind it like in the other image, I'd be well pleased!

[salaam]

Thanks for showing these pics Graeme.
Beautifully taken and amazing effects.

Anas

[Burpee]

My favorite is the lighthouse but the lighttorch is so interesting.

I really am interested in the painterly effect. I tried to recreate it but I didn't do as well. The subsequent explanation of the blur on a duplicate layer did help. If you do more I'd like to see them. Thanks.

[gdavidson]

Thank you for your very kind feedback Salaam. There's so much beauty out there when the light is right.

Burpee, to make things easier for you, I've attached the very .xar file I used. It's not at camera resolution as it would be a monster of a file to post! Hope that helps demonstrate the technique I used.

[zaphodeist]

I'm enjoying all these images, but that lighthouse is something else!

[gdavidson]

Glad you like them John!

The lighthouse pic was planned months in advance. I needed to know when I would get a full moon at the right elevation and bearing and to place me in a practical place to set up a tripod.

I used a free piece of astro software called Solarium to run through weeks of moon movements before I found one that was ideal. I turned up about 1am that night, very nervous that the clouds weren't going to clear. Thankfully, after the moon broke through I was able to position myself to get the moon directly over the lighthouse.

It was well worth the effort!

[wizard509]

The castle one was lightpainted with a torch and a 30 second exposure - it was rather scary in the dark!

It sure was worth the effort though.
Great photos.