White Nancy — Painted With Light
{ White Nancy, painted with light (LED Torch) and 20 second exposure at 100 ISO f5. Lens: Sigma 10-20mm. }
I have been planning this kind of thing for some time now and last Sunday the conditions were just about right. It was a fairly balmy night with a clear sky and a large and reasonably bright waning moon. I decided to ride up to Kerridge with all of my gear crammed into a back pack — not a very comfortable ride with a tripod and large camera on ones back but I just felt that I had to try my White Nancy light painting experiment. I took some flash shots too but they are much less interesting than these.
The photos were taken with a Nikon D80 which is probably not really the best camera for such long exposures, some have reported that they are very noisy above 1 second of activity due to the current hungry sensor heating up but these shots appear to be better than I had expected though they are not suitable for up-scaling and printing at any appreciable size unfortunately.
I enjoy light painting for a number of reasons, not least being out doors after dark but there is also something very interactive about it, the sense of actually working with the image as the camera is capturing it is very satisfying and creates a feeling of man and machine (camera) working in some new kind of harmony.