Shooting Light Trails

Venue
Friends living room, Linlithgow

Equipment
Sony Alpha 200;Tripod; Black card; 2 x Maglites; Glass of blackcurrant squash; Black cotton

Comments
After reading on article on shooting light trails I thought that it would be an interesting thing to try and so off I popped to the shops to get card and cotton. I lay the card against the wall and placed the glass on the card so it would serve as a background. I tied the cotton to the smallest
Maglite so that my hand wouldn't be in the shot and used the other Maglite to light the drink up from above. I set the aperture to f/9 to reduce the amount of background light into the shot and then played with the shutter speeds between 4 and 10 seconds until my battery finally ran out. The smaller Maglite was swung in circles around the glass during the exposure time to hopefully leave light rings surrounding the glass.

I had to experiment the distance above the glass of the second Maglite to make sure that the scene wasn't too bright, not that easy with LED Maglites but for my first attempt I was pleased with the different results. For contrast there is a shot with no second light source.

On the whole I was pleased with the results although the light from the larger Maglite did reflect off the smaller Maglite and is visible in some of the shots which is a little disappointing but something I can improve upon in future shoots. When I have more battery life I will set this shoot up again and explore a wider range of shutter speeds and background and light colours.

To see the photos from this shoot please click HERE.