Light painting

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help out if you’re short on helpers.
• Ask everyone to come along wearing dark clothes. Let them know that it’ll be helpful if they can bring some of their own equipment too.
• Check that you’ve got parents and carers’ permission to share any photos you take during the session.

 

Take some photos

1. The person using the camera should set it up to take long exposure photos.

2. Everyone should work together to decide where they’ll take their photos, frame the scene, and set up a tripod (if they have one). They should try to eliminate as much light as possible from their scene, for example, by avoiding standing directly under street lights.

3. Everyone should split into small groups or pairs to plan their ideas for their light painting.

4. Each group should get into a space to chat about and practise their light painting ideas.
5. When they’re ready, everyone should take it in turns to take their photos. One group at a time should move into the photo space and spend a couple of minutes trying out their light painting ideas with the camera. They could use a torch, head torch, or light on a smartphone as a light source.

6. Once all of the groups have had a go, everyone should show off the photos. If there’s time, they could try out some different ideas or camera settings.

Lighting ideas

Once you’ve got the hang of the basics, try some different techniques and torches and see what everyone can create. We’ve come up with a few ideas to help get you started:

• If you’re painting words, you’ll need to write them backwards: if you’re facing the camera, write from right to left so that they come out the right way around on the photo. Don’t worry if you forget or find it too tricky – you can always flip the photo post production.
• If you’re painting letters, it can help to use a flat surface like the ground or a big log to write on. Use your body as a guide to try and make sure they’re all the same size.
• Try taping some string lights to a stick to make your own light bar and create different patterns.
• You can include people in your photos if they stand still in your scene. Use a second light source to light up your subject so that you can see them clearly. If you’re using a smartphone, try taking a screenshot of a plain white page to use to light up your subject, instead of using the smartphone torch.
• You can include spooky transparent figures by asking someone to stand still in the frame for a few seconds, then quickly move out of the scene.
• If it’s really dark, you could ask someone to pose in front of the camera and use torches to light them up from behind – this will create a light silhouette outline of their pose.