The winner of the Light Painting Photography contest titled “Light Being” is…  Dennis Berka, A.K.A Ryus Light Works, for the super cool image above! You might look at this image an wonder how the heck it was created in a single exposure, well there were a lot of steps involved as you will see from the description below! Here is what Dennis said about his complex winning image!

“The photo was created in the ruins of an old tar production building. The place is usually a swamp below the pillars you see in the photo, but one summer here was so hot that it dried up. So I decided to go there with two fellow lightpainters and try out a technique I played around with at that time. For the Fire Golem I placed a small bit of shaped steel wool on a black metal sheet and put up a tripod next to it. I used an old analog Nikkor zoom lens that had a macro setting so it was easy to set focus on the little figure. It was about the size of a smartphone. Next I positioned another tripod for the scene you see in the photo and put a manual wide angle lens on the camera. After setting the scene I drew a circle on the screen of my camera with a non permanent whiteboard marker to mark where the fire golem was supposed to appear. Back to the steel wool figure to align it to fit inside the circle on the camera screen. Once everything was prepared and my friends placed in the scene I closed down the aperture of the zoom lens nearly all the way, lit the steel wool with a lighter and started the exposure. Once it was fully burned through (with the help of a few blows of air) I capped the lens, swapped it to the wide angel and switched tripods to the one for the scene. Now cap off the wide angle lens and the only thing left to do was walk into the scene to the place where the fire golem is supposed to stand and light the scene from there in red. I used a technique that Pala Teth demonstrated a few times here hiding the flashlight from the camera. The last touch was to add a little lake blue light to the shadows of the scene to make them visible a bit more. The rest of the light came from street lanterns a little bit to the side of the place that produced a real nice texture on the pillars because it was shining through large bushes. I played around with this technique quite a lot and have refined and used it a lot of times since then to create a lot of fantastic photos that people always wonder about how they were made.”

You can check out more of Dennis’s Light Painting work on his Facebook and Instagram pages linked Below:
https://www.facebook.com/RyusLightworks
https://www.instagram.com/ryuslightworks

The Models for this image were the Light Painting Duo Night Lights: https://www.facebook.com/Nightandlights/

For this winning Image Dennis will receive a prize package filled with light painting tools and treasures from our sponsors  COAST Flashlights, Neon Flexible and Light Painting Brushes ! Please support these awesome companies that support our light painting art from, without them this contest series would not be possible!

If you would like to enter the next Light Painting Photography contest click here for all the details.

The winner for the Orb themed Light Painting Photography Contest for September 2019 is… Mart Barras for the above image titled Nucleus! The thought and execution that went into creating this image without any post production is just nuts. Here is what Mart said about the image… “This was shot in an abandoned MOD ammo dump in wales, during a camping trip with other UK light-painters. I set up facing up a doorway in the dump, knowing it would give me a lot of dead space for a camera rotation and act as a main element and add to the framing. I then put Phil in the doorway and set up a flash on a stand behind him gelled orange. I did a couple of test shots to ensure the rotation part was as accurate as I could get it. I then set up a second tripod , close by facing down the corridor of the dump and marked the spot in the floor where I wanted an orb to be spun. Once that was set up I returned to the original tripod, I set some vape going behind Phill and started the exposure. At each rotation point, I fired off the flash and then capped the lens and moved to it the next position etc. Once I had come back to the start I left the lens cap on and moved the camera to the second tripod position and re-adjusted my focal length to the spot marked out for the orb. The final part was to spin the orb and end the exposure. SOOC Raw conversion in camera, Shot in one exposure. No photoshop.” Tools used: Nikon 7100D Tokina 11-16mm Two Tripods Orb tool Flash Gun Flash Stand Gels Vape Machine Camera Rotation Tool Settings: F5.6, ISO200, 12mm 195.2 seconds Make sure to follow Mart’s mind blowing light painting work on his Facebook and Instagram pages linked below! https://www.facebook.com/mart.barras https://www.instagram.com/martbarras_lightpainting/ For this winning Mart will receive a prize package filled with light painting tools from our sponsors Denis Smith, COAST Flashlights, Neon Flexible and Light Painting Brushes ! Please support these awesome companies that support our light painting art from, without them this contest series would not be possible! If you would like to enter the next Light Painting Photography contest click here for all the details.

The winner for the transportation themed Light Painting Photography Contest for July 2019 is… Jordi Radok for the above image titled Ghost Rider! Here is what Jordi had to say about the winning image!

“It’s been almost a year since we had this photo in a list of photos to do with light painting. We had not been given the opportunity, or so we thought. When we saw the theme of the Light Painting Photography contest I immediately thought about this photo, but time passed, and in the last week before the deadline we started asking friends if they knew someone with a motorcycle that we could use. In the end we got to create the photo in a custom motorcycle workshop! We shot it during their work time so we had to work as fast as possible, because they were working! We took a model mechanic and we did some tests, until we found a picture that seemed correct. The surprise was when we put it on the computer screen, the “model” had not been staying still, so the photo was horrible. Only half a skull and dark shadows were seen around the body, we had to discard the photo, and there were only two days left until the deadline…”

“The next day I remembered that my brother had a couple of old bikes to repair in a small garage. We got down to work… We cleared a little space, put aside all the tools and took one of the bikes, lined the most visible parts with black vinyl because it was originally white, we put a small skull over the fairing and prepared the tripod and camera with an angular optic and a low-angle plane. Almost without looking for it we realized that with a roof very low the roof lines gave us a very interesting perspective, and we started playing. We tried the photo the day before we had internalized the process, Eva put on the Ghost rider kit – mask, leather jacket and chains and rode on top of the bike.”

 

“The first thing that I did was to illuminate Eva and the bike with a warm Minimaglite lantern. Once illuminated I started with the fire effect, which is made with a black fiber optic and a Thorfire tk15s flashlight at full power with an orange gel.”

“I focused more on the front wheel and above the head, then I did a little light against the ground with the same flashlight at half power. Finally we used a bit of smoke to create atmosphere and made a very soft contra light directly from Ghost rider, which was like a statue !! This image we repeated 6 times, but when we put the last photo on the big screen we looked at each other and a huge smile came out to us both, we had just got the photo that we had imagined.”

Gear Used:
Sony a7S
Samyang 14mm

Settings:
Bulb mode
301″ Second Exposure
ISO 125
F 6.3

You can see more of our work here:
https://www.instagram.com/2pixelsart/
https://www.facebook.com/2pixelsart/

For this winning Jordi will receive a prize package filled with light painting tools from our sponsors COAST Flashlights, and Light Painting Brushes ! Please support these awesome companies that support our light painting art from, without them this contest series would not be possible!

If you would like to enter the next Light Painting Photography contest click here for all the details.