Back in September we featured a creative technique that used an iPad to “light paint” 3D objects and text. Now there’s an app called Holographium that allows anyone to light paint words with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. All you do is provide some text, start taking a long exposure photo, and then drag your iPad (or whatever iDevice) through the photo while the app slowly displays the various slices of the text. The resulting photograph will show the text spelled out in 3D and floating in the air.
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Wanting to capture a nighttime panoramic photograph of Toledo, Spain in which darker areas were illuminated, the Photographic Association of Toledo decided to eschew HDR and attempt something new — light-painting on an epic scale. They enlisted the help of 50 association photographers who strolled around the city firing off their flashes multiple times per minute. The resulting photograph was illuminated by over 3000 flashes covering 100K square meters. Wowzers!

This Spanish blog has a detailed account of how the photograph was made, though you’ll have to have it machine-translated if you can’t read Spanish.

Pintando con luz toda una ciudad (via Strobist)

This is one of the most creative examples of light painting we’ve seen — Flickr user Janne Parviainen created this unique light painting photograph to show a skeleton jumping out of a body. It’s straight from the camera without any Photoshop trickery.

Image credit: Serotonia by jannepaint and used with permission

Certain higher end flashes have a strobe (AKA repeating flash) mode that can flash repeatedly, freezing a moving subject in various positions in a single exposure. This tutorial will teach you how to create a similar effect using light painting techniques, resulting in the above photo.
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Light painting and calligraphy are both hard enough skills to master on their own, but what about combining the two and doing it well? That’s what French artist Julien Breton specializes in. These photographs show Breton’s calligraphy created with light with no trickery involved at all.
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No, these aren’t movie stills from the upcoming Tron movie. Evan Ackerman over at BotJunkie wanted to know exactly how the Evolution Robotics’ Mint went about cleaning an open space, so he shot long exposure photographs of the robot sweeping and then mopping. Yay for automated light painting!

BotJunkie Review: Evolution Robotics Mint (via Wired)

This has got to be one of the awesomest uses of a record player ever: photographer Kim Pimmel photographed light sources attached to a spinning record player in the dark, and strung the still frames together into a beautifully hypnotic stop-motion video set to Tron.

The stills were shot using a Nikon D90 with up to 20 second exposures for each shot. Pimmel writes,

To control the lights, I used an Arduino controlled via bluetooth to drive a stepper motor. The stepper motor controls the movements of the lights remotely from Processing.

The light sources include cold cathode case lights, EL wire, lasers and more.

Our only complaint is that the video is much too short.

(via Gizmodo)

This video will blow your mind. We’ve all seen light-painting photos and stop-motion animations created with those photos, but marketing agency Dentsu London figured out how to take light painting a step further using an iPad.

By using all sorts of crazy computer modeling and animation techniques, they figured out how to create 3D light-paintings by playing a “CAT-scan” style animation on the iPad while sweeping the iPad through the air. By repeatedly doing this kind of sweeping with various 3D models, they were able to create 3D light painting stop-motion animations. Here’s how they explain it:

We use photographic and animation techniques that were developed to draw moving 3-dimensional typography and objects with an iPad. In dark environments, we play movies on the surface of the iPad that extrude 3-d light forms as they move through the exposure. Multiple exposures with slightly different movies make up the stop-frame animation.

Prepare to be amazed.

A big thanks to Jim Goldstein for the tip!

Freezelight is a Russian group that creates light painting photographs and animations. They have a pretty interesting blog showcasing their work, and opened up a Vimeo account a few days ago to showcase their films.

The above animation is titled “Freezelight Magic Forest“, and consists of roughly 300 photographs shot with a Canon 5D Mark II, EF 50/1.4, and EF 24-70/2.8. They also have a pretty interesting behind-the-scenes video showing the creation of a light painting animation.

This would have surely been included in our 13 creative light painting animations post a couple weeks ago had they been online then.

(via Gizmodo)

Light painting is when you use bright points of light and long exposure times to “paint” light into a photograph. You’ve probably seen numerous tutorials on the technique by now, but if you haven’t, we posted a brief tutorial on the technique about half a year ago.

In addition to single frames of creative light painting, numerous photographs can be combined to create stop-motion animation done with light painting photographs. In this post we’ve compiled an awesome list of light painting stop motion videos to inspire you. Enjoy!

#1: PiKAPiKA THE MOVIE

Japanese animation crew PIKAPIKA specializes in light painting, and incorporates many groundbreaking ideas and experiments into their videos.

#2: Lightpaint Piano Player

An animated character playing a real piano. The frames were shot with a Canon Rebel with 20-30 second exposure times.

#3: Lucky – All India Radio

This video, created by Australian animation company Dee Pee Studios, was created using glowsticks. Each scene typically took a whole night to photograph.

#4: Light Graffiti / Painting Stop Motion

Each photo/frame in this video took 30 seconds to a minute to expose.

#5: POWER PILL light painting

A creative short film about a man whose video game comes to life. It was done entirely with still photographs and light painting.

#6: SPFW – IG Light

A medley of different light painting animations.

#7: Light Painting

A commercial that utilizes light painting animation.

#8: Spider walk

A short, conceptual video of a spider walking that took two hours to shoot and half a day to put together.

#9: Light Painting Animation

A simple compilation of various light painting animations set to a beat.

#10: Electrobloom – Michael Bosanko

Conceptual video of a flower blooming. What’s interesting about this video is how objects are three dimensional when the camera moves.

#11: Light Painting

An interesting compilation of clever light animations by Zé Brandão.

#12: Sprint – Light Trail

A Sprint commercial that follows around a beam of light traveling around a city and ending up at a woman’s phone.

#13: Light Graffiti Fight

A stop motion fight that uses light painting in creative ways.

I think the concept of animation using light painting and stop motion is still relatively unexplored, and that some serious thought and a lot of effort could easily yield a super-viral video. Are you up to the challenge?

Video credits: Videos copyright their respective owners. Sources can be reached by via the YouTube or Vimeo logo in the videos.