Fourth of July Light Art

In celebration of America's independence day, we like to light things on fire and blow stuff up.

What an excellent opportunity to talk about a phenomenon called "light art"- one of my favorite things to do with a camera. Light art is a fairly vague term that essentially means using a long exposure time and some sort of light source to "paint" on film, or in this case a CCD.

Fireworks, including (and especially!) the humble sparkler, are some of the easiest and best ways to make quick, but very fun and creative, light art.

If you've got a camera with a decent manual mode (I used my Casio), and you're at least somewhat familiar with the exposure settings and their related concepts, you're ready to create some nice-looking light art. (A tripod is also a really helpful tool).

With your camera in manual mode, what you'll basically want to do is:

	Set ISO as low as possible. Set aperture as wide as possible. Set a very slow shutter speed (which equals a long exposure time).

The idea is for the shutter speed to be slow enough for you to do something interesting with light while the shutter is open.

The exposure length you'll want to use depends on what you're going to be doing, but generally you'll want it as long as possible, assuming the camera will be steady.

Keep in mind that with longer exposure times, you'll start to see the surroundings, at least a little. For instance, this 30-second exposure caused the Hood Canal, and particularly some of the lit houses across it, to show up.

If this is a look you want- consider using a flash, which will illuminate the area and make it a "background" of sorts over which you will paint with light.

Just be careful not to use too long of an exposure time, particularly when combined with a flash- you may end up with a somewhat washed out end result- and you may even start to see "ghost" images of yourself!

This photo is a good example of not setting a long enough exposure time- a friend was trying to spell out my daughter's name ("Aurora"), but I didn't give her long enough to finish it.

Try out different perspectives- if you've got friends who can help, see if you can get far away from the subject. Combine this with long enough exposure for some of the environment to show up, and you can get different and interesting shots.

You can achieve some dynamic effects by moving the camera intentionally during the shot. In this picture, I moved the camera up to follow the path of the rocket. This movement caused an elongation of the end explosion, changing the overall image.

The most important thing (besides, of course, to be safe) is to simply be creative and have fun with it. Try out different light sources, after you've gotten started tonight with fireworks (for us Americans, anyway). Get inspired- there are lots of excellent examples of light art out there- some of it taken to a high art form, others going to the next level and creating an animated short film using light art. Good luck!