I came across this really cool link of a video on Gizmodo which you can find here under ‘Light as Performance Art’ .  I’m not sure if I like the music or the art better (sorry, weird musical tastes, I like space-out stuff)   I wanted to found out how to make light art so I decided to try some extended exposures with my Sony DSC-H10, though I wish I had a better camera to do this with but the fact it can do long exposure times is great for a point and shoot camera.

To get my camera to shoot with an extended shutter time I set the camera into manual mode then went to the exposure setting which was at 200 or 400 (ISO) and brought it down. It went from 400 to 200 to 100 to 50, etc.. once it got very low then it started showing 1″ 3″ 5″ 10″ etc mean 1 3 5 and 10 second exposures. I’m not sure what cameras support this so you may have to check your documentation.  If you have a nice higher end digital camera it should definitely be supported.  If you have a point-and-shoot like mine it may be hit-and-miss!

While the photos below aren’t astounding by any means they are quite interesting and I did some more stuff in my second post on this topic which you can see here Long Exposure / Light Art Fun.  I originally posted this article in May 2009 and now it’s already 2011 so I think I need to try some more attempts at the delayed exposure light pictures and see what I can come up with.

If you have a camera that will let you adjust the  exposure time (usually in ‘M’anual mode), try this out and upload your pics to a web server and link your site or source for images and I’ll link with credit!    Use the ‘comment’ link on the right to send me a message, or post a comment with the info and I’ll authorize it through. 🙂

I cropped some of these photo’s and cut the resolution back.   I used a laser pointer, iPod Touch with the free ‘flashlight’ app, a color changing LED pen I got from the guys at YesCo at the sign show down in Florida and a blowtorch.    Since the sort of thing YesCo deals with is the kind of thing I work with at my day job, I have a lot of LED lighting resources at hand, so I think this is something I’ll continue to experiment with.   Stay tuned!

If interested, check out my other Light Art Posts

3/31/2011 – I haven’t done any light art stuff lately, but I do try to follow up on it now and again, I really wish I had a nice SLR to do nice open shutter long exposures.  This is kind of a cool story by Dennis Smith, it’s a 15 minute movie about how long exposures used to make spheres changed his life. I don’t know if it was the art itself that helped, I think it was doing something he loved and enjoyed through creating something from nothing. That’s my interpretation anyways the most joy I experience is when I take raw resources and create something with them.  Anyways, why not pop over to Dennis Smith’s Ball of Light (new window/tab) movie and then come back and look around some more?

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