Ryan Warnberg and Michelle McSwain maybe better known as MRI Light Painting, the same folks that brought us the Light Bomber App have teamed up with Imperial Creation and released a cool new Light Painting Video App, YES VIDEO APP, called PABLO!. Pablo is a “Long-exposure photo and video app that creates visual works of art through light painting”. What I found most exciting about the App is that you can see your light paintings come to life with the live light painting video feature!

This technology is a much different process than just using a standard long exposure app for your phone. Obviously our phones don’t currently have a real shutter to leave open so how do you trick the phone into thinking it does? Well they created a custom algorithm that takes multiple one second exposures and merges them to produce a video and photo all in one. The team has been hard at work on this patent pending technology and it is pretty dang impressive, especially seeing the quality that is being produced on a phone. You see your light paintings come to life in real time and then you upload the visuals to your Pablo profile and then share your creations with the world. You can also share the videos and final image to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for now, with a feature for saving directly to your phone in the works.

The PABLO Light Painting App is just part of the story, building a strong Light Painting community within the App is also a really important part of this project Ryan said “Light Painting is best when it is collaborative. We worked to create not just a light painting video camera, but also a community around it, to act as a never-ending source of inspiration and encouragement for PABLO users.”

The App is fairly easy to use with slider settings for light sensitivity, exposure time, and shutter delay. They have a few videos showing the how to use the app here but I think Johnny A. from Stimulight the Night, who was asked to be a Beta tester, created a great tutorial video showing some of the features and images that can be created with it, so I will leave you with that. PABLO is free to download in the iTunes app store HERE, so make sure to check it out and YES there is a Android version coming soon. Enjoy.

September 12th-16th is Night Photography Week on Creative Live and if you catch the live stream its FREE! If you can’t catch the live stream the there is also a paid option for the on demand access. Check it out right here!

The instructors include:
Gabriel Biderman, Tim Cooper, Matt Hill, Lance Keimig, and Chris Nicholson.

Light Painting will be covered by Lance Keimig and Tim Cooper.

This same group of Night Photography Masters also have a really cool on going series of workshops called National Parks at Night that you can check out!

Here is what is going to be covered on Creative Live:

Night Photography Fundamentals
Gabriel Biderman will be teaching a Night Photography Fundamentals course for all the beginners out there, exploring the fundamentals of night photography, how to catch the stars and the dynamic landscapes when photographing in national parks, and how to capture an urban setting.

Night Photography Toolkit
Chris Nicholson, the author of Photographing National Parks, will help all photographers plan their shoots from what parks to photograph in during what seasons, and how to safely explore and set your shot in his class Night Photography Toolkit.

Astro Photography
Lance Keimig will cover how to capture truly out of this world imagery, while teaching how to capture the milky way and star trails in the course Astro Photography.

Light Painting
Timothy Cooper will take the creatives another step, by introducing Light Painting into your tricks and adding a dynamic element to your landscapes with light writing or accenting different elements of your photograph.

Portraits at Night
And Lastly Matt Hill will introduce Portraits at Night. Using your friends, or models, discover how you can capture amazing portraits in urban environments and national parks, without losing the amazing sky as a background.

RSVP for the live stream HERE.

Here are the 15 Finalist for the LPWA Oviedo 2016 Light Painting Contest. The Contest was organized by Ayuntamiento de Oviedo with the collaboration of Children of Darklight and Light Painting World Alliance (LPWA)!

With 234 incredible entries narrowing it down to the top 15 had to be difficult, I can’t imagine having to pick a winner out of these. Congratulations to everyone, some really beautiful and progressive light painting work represented here. Grand winners will be announced Sept 15, 2016!

This Light Painting Photography contest was supported by:
Administration of City Oviedo
HerramientasLightpainting.com
Led Lenser (Spain)
Nubia Technology (China)
LightPaintingBrushes.com