Light Painting Contest Winner, Jan 2014

And the winner is… the duo of Heinz-Joerg & Garry Krätz a.k.a. Electrical Movements in the Dark (EMD) for this fantastic light painting.

EMD have been creating their light painting work since 2010 and their work is inspired by the early work of LAPP-Pro and LightArt Photography Master JanLeonardo. For this winning image they left the shutter open for a total of 368 seconds using the technique of capping the lens several times.

Here’s how it happened:

We had the idea to create a fountain made with pyrotechnique. The fireworks should fall down like a little waterfall, combined with a red laser light.

We used a little warehouse for the shooting. In the middle we placed a little tripod with an axis on it. A big red laserpointer (1.5 Watt!) inside a microphone clamp was fitted on the axis with a counterweight on the opposite side.

The laser pointer can be seen here:
https://www.1a-shops.eu/cgi-bin/shopserver/shops/s012216/index.cgi?aktion=um&ps=252931&subid=252931

So we put an add-on on the laserpointer to create the lines on the floor and the wall. It took more than half an hour to get the right position for camera and laser tripod. We always work with an iPad and a CamRanger (http://camranger.com). CamRanger is a great tool for astrophotography, star trails and light painting.

On the axis there was also a stick (1.5 m) with pyro material at the end (and a counterweight on the other side of course). So it was easy to spin it around slowly but exactly.

We made some test shots (white balance, aperture, etc.) to find out the best settings – and how long we have to spin the red laser.

After that, we started spinning the laser for about two minutes, then we covered the lens. I switched out the laser and light on the pyro on the stick. The stick was spinning very slow so we got the effect that the lights fall down towards the ground – like a waterfall. The pyro was burning for about 15 seconds, then we covered the lens again. A few seconds later the pyro went out. So I stopped the spinning, light on the single pyro in the middle, and started again spinning very slowly. We uncovered again the lens for a few seconds, then we stopped.

We made this procedure four or five times again to get the best result. This picture was taken with my Canon EOS 7D using the EF-S 10-22mm lens with 13mm, 368 sec., ISO 100 and f/25.

Of course we wore protection glasses when using the laser! And a fire extinguisher was standing nearby…

Check out more images and info from EMD at these links:
http://www.electricalmovements.de

Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/electricalmovementsinthedark/

Illuminations made by Garry:
http://www.luminale.info

For this awesome winning image EMD will receive a light painting photography prize pack full of treasures from contest sponsors  COAST Flashlights, Neon Flexible, and LED Flexible!

Click here to see the current contest theme and find out how to enter to win your LPP prize pack!