Burritt on the Mountain decided to host a photography workshop in conjunction with the Huntsville Photographic Society on May 30th 2019. Fellow light painter and friend M. Blanca Eyre and I had the opportunity to teach a Lightpainting class during this event. We had a planning night where we decided where we wanted to teach the class and selected the Chandler cabin based on it’s location away from area lighting.
Having recently attended the Nightscaper Conference out in Moab, I had learned about low level lighting(LLL). LLL is typically so low that you don’t really notice it until your eyes become adapted to the dark. This method allows you to light subjects with constant light instead of the age old method of swiping a flashlight across the scene during a long exposure.
During our test shots, we discovered that the Blue Cross sign really didn’t need to be in our photos and the Newer 160 “Low level” light used for the exterior wasn’t really very low and would have to be filtered more. Several other lights were placed inside the cabins.
After our night of testing, I sketched the cabin and we proceeded to lay out some design plans since we had such a short period of time for the class. (It was only an hour long). We tried to lay out all the tools for each design in order so we could quickly move from one design to another. A gallery of our designs is shown below.
The event went off fairly successfully and the time flew by much too fast. Here are some photos from the event.
Our first design was using a light tube with black gaffers tape stripes on it. This was chosen to be first as it is a fairly quick design to do and was easy to repeat several times while everyone gets their camera settings adjusted.
Our second design incorporates a Jason Rinehart spiral (although not done nearly like his) behind our model Nicole and uses the fiberflies pixel whip on the ground in front. We attempted to use the Johnny Griffin designed “waterfall” tube on the steps but it didn’t turn out as well as we had hoped. We used LED pucks with a directional base behind the four main columns of the cabin to help light the scene.
This is probably my favorite image from the evening. I made the angel wings behind the model and Blanca added the bubbles. (Angel wings using LPB feather plexiglass and bubbles made with LPB circle plexiglass)
Cecil Holmes was also teaching some classes at the event earlier in the evening and he came along to check out what we were doing. We couldn’t resist dragging him up to pose. Changing the color of the LED pucks behind the columns to red made the scene more appealing as it contrasted well with the yellow bubbles (LPB’s circle plexi).
The last design we had time for uses Jason Page’s Ghost design (made with the LPB light whip). LED pucks changed to blue, and the LLL inside the cabin as scene through the window.