Create Light Graffiti Photography

This article will tell you how to light paint (light graffiti) in photography with a DSLR camera. It's very fun to do with friends, or when you're bored home alone.

Steps

  1. Get a flashlight, glow stick, or something that provides colored or non-colored light. One of the newest creations is a pixel stick. Be sure to check them out!
  2. Go into a totally dark room. A bedroom with a kind of high bed or table would help as a tripod. Or a real tripod.
  3. Set your camera to Manual mode if it's a DSLR, and make the shutter speed 30 seconds(looks like this on the screen for Canon: 30"), or have a friend help and set it to BULB mode. BULB mode allows for the shutter to stay open for as long as the trigger is pushed. A longer shutter speed means more time that light is allowed in through the lens.
  4. Set your ISO to one hundred or two hundred, depending on the brightness of the room you are in.
  5. Set your Aperture (or f/stop) to 5.6. A lower aperture means more amount of light entering into the lens. The higher the aperture, the less light.
  6. Put it on a two second timer so you have time to get in front of the lens, or have a friend press the shutter button or do the pattern..
  7. Face the flashlight at the lens, and start writing, drawing, or doodling your design.
  8. When the shutter opens, you have thirty seconds (or however long your friend decides, if using BULB mode) to write. When the shutter goes off, check out your masterpiece! This can also be done with sparklers, lightening, or highway photography with blurred head and tail lights.

Tips

  • You can only do Three or four letters at once, so if you want to do your name and it's really long, do it in segments and put them together.
  • It takes a lot of practice, so have patience.
  • You have to write backwards when doing this, so you may want to practice that. Another option is to write normally and later flip the image horizontally.

Things You'll Need

  • Flashlight of some kind
  • DSLR camera
  • Dark room

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