This past weekend, I visited the local Confederate Cemetery near Marietta Square late at night with my friend Matt Barnett and we both made our first attempt at long exposure light painting photography. I think we were both really thrilled with the results. We tried several different techniques, ranging from painting our subjects with colored lights creating a dreamlike, surreal effect, to painting the subject with a more natural white light and using colored lights to create interesting background effects. Our exposure times ranged from 15 seconds to 30 seconds, as there was enough ambient lights from the surrounding city and street lights to allow for shorter exposures. An interesting thing to point out is that in several of our shots, we actually would walk through the exposures to adjust the lighting, without being captured in the final image. I had a ton of fun with it, and am looking forward to trying it again soon!

You can click on either of the images below to see higher resolution images on Flickr.

Painted from each side with blue and red LED lights

Halo effect with spinning LED lights and painting with white LED