First light-painting tests in 2016-2017

 I recently opened an old hard drive to look for photos. I didn't find them but on the other hand I fished out my first light painting experiments with tubes and steel wool!

March 2017. After following the first online guides of the master Eric Parè I managed to build the first light tubes and illuminate them more or less well with torches that I no longer use today. I did some tests at home to understand how to set up the room and we went to the sea to look for a deserted place, without light pollution and without problems.

We went with a friend to one of the most used locations for light painting in the following years. New moon, therefore total darkness. We took the first tube (red) and with an exposure of about 30 seconds we get the photo that opens this post.

 Since then I have decided that abstract light painting was not my way.

A few nights later, I convince a friend of mine to die of cold and we take some shots in an abandoned park near my house. One of the results is this:

We were pretty satisfied. The micro 4/3 sensor is not bright at all and the tube is not illuminated uniformly but we like the silhouette effect.

 But even before, we created something different!

Summer 2016. It was late at night and before taking my friend back home I tell her I have the GoPro with me and that I would like to take some strange photos with the sparks and the long exposure. We stop on a beach and the first result is this:

I used a GoPro Hero 4 Black with a simple timelapse set at 30 seconds per shot. I could not and did not want to direct the shooting, timelapse was the most practical solution to fix the "dance" on the beach with sparklers.

After a few months, in the middle of nowhere:

Not bad if you think that the Canon EOS M that I had at the time did not even allow shooting in BULB mode. I still didn't have the tubes but with a torch taken from street vendors I had fun with light writing:

Light writing is another planet. Calligraphy courses have helped me but ... it's time to jump a year and show the first photos with steel wool:

That evening I brought the usual room and the inevitable GoPro to give support. Here, the shots with the Canon sucked but those with the GoPro were almost always interesting, perhaps due to the unusual position, the wide angle pushed and the composition that derived from it. You judge the difference:

This short tour of my first photographic experiments in light-painting ends here. What do you think about it? :)