165/365 Light painting experiment

As much as I enjoy photographing my favorite subjects, it's definitely fun -- and refreshing -- to step out and try something new. Experiment a little.

This week I was inspired by one of the photography blogs I check daily -- Digital Photography School. A contributor suggested a fun project in light painting.

The project was simple: hang a flashlight from the ceiling, turn it on in a dark room, place your camera directly underneath pointed upward, and send the flashlight swinging.

I have a lot of randomly placed, bare hooks in the ceiling at my house, so setting this up was a piece of cake. I used a pocket Maglite as my flashlight, whose beam is only about half an inch in diameter.

By lengthening the shutter speed, and letting the image be captured over a span of 20 seconds or more, and varying the length of the string suspending the flashlight, I got a different result each time.

Cool! These are my two favorites.

Camera: Canon 40D, 25 seconds and 62 seconds, f/22 at ISO 100