If you have not heard 2015 is The International Year of Light! A global initiative adopted by the United Nations to raise awareness of how optical technologies promote sustainable development and provide solutions to worldwide challenges in energy, education, agriculture, communications and health.

OSKAR the student chapter of The Optical Society is hosting a wonderful opportunity for Light Painters with their photography contest and exhibition in Karlsruhe, Germany June 26th-29th 2015.

They are inviting “photograph professionals and hobby-artist from all around the world to make a photo contribution to the International Year of Light 2015.”

OSKAR says: “We welcome photographers to use their camera to capture role of light in their lives. Send in your photos for any of the themes “Light in society”, “Light in Science” or “Light in Art”. This is a great opportunity to connect globally and illuminate your awareness of the basic component of your life – the light.”

Submissions are free, and it looks like a great opportunity to showcase your light painting work! Head over to OSKAR to get all the details on how to submit your images!

From time to time we come across a light painting and just stare it wondering how the F@#! did they do that?!?! Break Down is a series if which I only ask the artist one question “How the F@#! did you make this” its up to the artist to tell as little or as much as they want. For this Light Painting Breakdown Tim Gamble talks us through how he created the above image titled “Stroma”

So Tim how the F@#! did you make this?

GEAR USED:
Canon 650D
Tamron 17-50 f2.8
Yongnuo 565 ex + snoot
Samsung Tab 2
Tripod
Light stand with clamp for tablet
Yongnuo radio triggers for flash.

Patience 🙂

Settings
F-stop 14
Iso 100
63 seconds
Manual white balance

Firstly I took an image of a synapse and mirrored it for symmetry using a drawing app on the tablet. Next I used the same app to draw a head shaped space in black where I wanted my head to expose in the shot.

Set up the camera at head height and worked on the flash aspect of the shot. Ensuring my head was in the right place, focus was good and no light was spilling onto the wall behind me. I snooted the flash for this to concentrate the light from the flash onto my face. I used my radio triggers to fire the flash as this was the second part of the double exposure and therefore I wanted to choose when it went off. I also used my torch to illuminate under my chin to eradicate any shadows. Once happy I placed a marker on the floor and noted focus and focal length before moving onto the tablet.

I clamped my tablet to the light stand and used image 1 from before. Framed and focused and worked on the exposure time for this part. 1.5 seconds was enough to burn this part in. Once happy with everything I was ready to go.

Lights off and shutter fired. Counted to 1.5 seconds and put the lens cap on. Moved the tablet out of sight, reframed and focused for my head. Lens cap off and took up my position on my marker. Torch in one hand and radio trigger in the other I fired both at the same time ensuring I kept my head still.

The process took about 2.5 hours from start to finish.

Check out more of Tim’s incredible work HERE.

Light Painting is magic. It is an artform that gets people talking, if you have ever created a live light painting you know how quickly people start talking. No other Light Painter I know of has used our art form to share a political message better than Vicki DaSilva. For Vicki’s most recent and probably most important work to date, she teamed up with the Global Humanitarian Organization OxFam for the #WITHSYRIA campaign, urging World Leaders to Turn The Lights Back On For Syria! Vicki so strongly believes in this cause she declined the commission for her work on this project and donated all her images for the campaign.

Vicki said this about the With Syria project “Activist art contributes and communicates messages that powerfully transcends borders, governments, nationalities, age, gender and religions. Light graffiti and light painting allows for the exceptional element of access to location and photography documents the actions. As a global collective we have the extraordinary opportunity for global activism through a coordinated, orchestrated light graffiti smart mob or simply as individuals. Collectively or single handedly we have the ability to speak to any issue through our words or images drawn with light, in any language, anywhere in the world and inspire others to do the same. Turn the lights on to share important messages!”

Some facts, since war took hold of Syria in 2011:
83% of the lights have been turned off in the Country.
97% of the lights are off in Aleppo.
35% of the lights are off in Damascus.
At Least 200,000 people have been killed.
10 million people have fled their homes.
3 Million children are no longer in school.

We take our comfortable lives for granted. Can you imagine having everything you have, and the ones you love taken away from you tomorrow. Can you imagine having to literally run for your life with only what you could carry while your home town and every memory you made there was destroyed. For many of the people in Syria this is the reality, many of them are starving and dying from lack of basic needs. The people of Syria are just like you and me. They only want peace and security, they only want to be happy, healthy, and free.

As Light Painters we have a unique ability to bring awareness to things that matter with the magic that is Light Painting. This is only one of many humanitarian crisis that are happening right now.
We are calling on light painters around the world to use your unique abilities to help bring awareness to a crisis, help get the word out by creating a light painting including the phrase #WITHSYRIA. Tag them on Instagram, on Facebook and on Flickr. Vicki has got us started lets show our support for her and for the Syrian People.