Besides the portfolio, we had several tasks to accomplish. We were assigned a subject, and we were told to take ten good pictures of that subject. We were also given the choice to choose the subject, and mine that I chose was time lapse photography, or slow-motion photography. We were also assigned to take one picture with a large depth of field. But for the slo motion photography assignment, THIS would be my source. This guy has amazing photos! I am seriously going to invest a lot of my time taking these kinds of photos, and I can not wait to try some more of them! Now here are my photos!-

For my first photo, I went out to a street and sat on the edge of it with my camera and a tripod. Then I sat and just waited for cars to drive by! Word to the wise, make sure to stand far enough to the side that they won’t accidentally hit you when they go around corners. Apparently, people get mad when your out in the middle of the street. But I liked this picture because of the streams upon streams of lights are inside the single beams. Of course to take this picture, I had to have a slow shutter speed, of about 4 seconds.

This picture is my favorite of the ones I took of cars. I brightened the inside of the beams more, and it gave it a cooler and deeper orange color. I also like how this car had the small little light on top of it, so it created a small little stream going off the top. I don’t really know why, but that just makes the picture too me. I would have liked to crop out the mail box that is sitting on the side, but I think that it would have made the picture too small to be a good picture.

This was my first attempt to Light Paint. Light painting is simply setting your camera to a shutter speed of 5 or more seconds. and then waving a bright light or glow stick around to make it leave a trail. When done correctly, you can have many cool patters made out of light. I think that the idea of light painting is just awesome, and I am glad that I chose this for my subject. To take this picture I took a small LED light and waved it around while the shutter slowly opened and closed. The part that makes this picture cool is how a car drove by while I was taking the picture. It created a cool red light going right through the middle of the picture. The only thing that I am going to do different next time I do this assignment, is limit the light that is shining on me. It made me stand out a lot more than I should have and made me stick out. Maybe having a longer shutter speed will fix that but for now this is a cool picture.

For this picture we used a phone screen, and changed the color to a blue. Because the phone isn’t as bright as the glow sticks, the lines were a lot fatter. But you also have to do slower movements with less light shining through. Your camera will have a harder time focusing, so it will make the background darker. That to me is more beneficial, because it makes your light painting stand out more. That is really the focus of this kind of photography. The surrounding area is cool and gives you a sense of seeing more in the picture. But the important part is having the light.

I was wearing a black sweatshirt when I took the picture, but I wondered if it would look cool with a different color in the picture. My brother was wearing a bright red sweatshirt, and I immediately thought that it would be cool! I basically just told him to go crazy, and go crazy he did. For some reason only the red hood he had on showed up in the picture. Not really certain. But the thing that makes this picture pretty neat is the fact that the lights look a little like Japanese letters. One of the things that would make this picture better is if I had closed the garage door! It would have shown less concrete and more colors!

For some odd reason, blue was the only really good color of light for this. We tried green, but it didn’t show up. But the thing I focused on was trying to write with the light. When done correctly, you should get neat flowing letters. Mine was none of those, but if you look closely, you will see a R and a Y the first letters of my name. I didn’t have a lot of room to take the picture, so I couldn’t do my full name. The problem I had when taking this picture was what to do when I finished what I was doing, and still had the shutter taking the picture. It was difficult to say the least when timing my picture to finish taking. Thats why their are a bunch of looping lines going around it. I just kept swinging even when I should not have.

These pictures are my pride and joy. These were by far the coolest of my pictures. This is called steel wool photography, and it is super simple to do. All you need is a egg beater, some fine grade steel wool, a non flammable cord, and some copper wire (or any wire). Take your steel wool, and spread it apart until it is thin and see through. Then fold it gently into the egg beater. You must spread it out inside or you will not get very effective sparks. DO NOT FORGET SAFTEY CLOTHING! Sparks hurt when they land on bare skin, especially when you are slinging them around the danger is real of coming away with burns! The first time I did this I didn’t wear a hat, about twenty sparks landed in my hair and it hurt. Wear a hat, gloves, long sleeve shirt or sweatshirt, long pants, closed toe shoes and some glasses! Sparks hurt don’t forget that.

After you fold them into the egg beater, all you have to do is set your shutter speed to a number around 15-30 seconds. Then make sure to wrap your wire around the egg beater as tight as humanly possible. The reason why is because without the wire, their is nothing preventing the steel wool from flying out. You can actually see that happen in this picture, with the little flare of light going out to the side. The first time this happened it went straight up and landed on my head. Thankfully I was wearing a hat or that could have been bad. The faster you swing, the smaller sparks you will have, but with more volume. The smaller you swing the larger fatter the sparks will be, with less volume. To each and their own, but I prefer swinging faster to get more sparks.

This is one of my favorite pictures. This one I actually believed was a screw up when I started. I was standing to far to the left, and wasn’t in the center of the photo like I believed. But it ended up looking cool, especially with the car driving by. The red light through the middle was super cool and really beneficial! I also lost control of the string a little bit, but instead of ruining it, it gave it some more definition. It wasn’t so uniform, which I for one, loved! I for one hate it when a picture is to uniform, and perfect in balance. I can see the uses, but I believe that the world is so random, pictures should match it.
And I’m super sorry Twitchell for not having this posted! I can’t figure out why it would not work, but I have it posted and I’m super sorry for the inconvenience!