A Fun Project with the Family and A little slice of Artistic Expression!

Good evening Steemit Friends! I have been seeing a lot of really cool photography on here - one recently was regarding light painting, and I realized - we have fourth of July coming up! This means I was able to get my hands on some sparklers - I haven't done a lot of long-exposure photography before - so really I just wanted to play a little. I set up my camera outside on a tripod and at about 10:30 last night we had a whole lot of fun with these sparklers. Below are tons of still photos and .gif builds of the cool stuff we created with long-exposure photography and some cheap bin sparklers - I got about 6 bundles of 5 for 4 dollars!

“In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.” – Hans Hofmann

I did a little research on light painting and learned that surprisingly, people have been experimenting with Light Photography since the late 1880's. One of my favorite artists who was notably known to have created some images using the light painting technique was Pablo Picasso. He teamed up with Gjorn Milli a renowned photographer in the late 1940's and it was there that Milli taught Picasso of the technique. Picasso was actually rather well known for his light paintings and long-exposure photography (seen below)

If you are interested in learning more about the history of light painting this article online is where my information is coming from: Light Painting Photography.com

I grabbed the sparklers from a local stand that set up for the holiday - I live in a state where they are illegal - but they turn an eye for the little stuff for the holiday. Places like South Carolina allow you to set them off pretty much year round - but in NC they are off limits all other times of year except for the ones sold on and around the 4th of July. I personally think it seems a bit silly - but whatever.

I got the whole family involved with me making all kinds of fun images.

Canon EOS REBEL T3 | f/8.0; ISO100; Shutter Speed: 5.0; Lens: 18-55mm

Canon EOS REBEL T3 | f/8.0; ISO100; Shutter Speed: 6.0; Lens: 18-55mm

Canon EOS REBEL T3 | f/8.0; ISO100; Shutter Speed: 5.0; Lens: 18-55mm

Canon EOS REBEL T3 | f/8.0; ISO100; Shutter Speed: 20.0; Lens: 18-55mm

Canon EOS REBEL T3 | f/8.0; ISO100; Shutter Speed: 5.0; Lens: 18-55mm

This one looks like a fortune cookie!

Canon EOS REBEL T3 | f/8.0; ISO100; Shutter Speed: 5.0; Lens: 18-55mm

My daughter had the idea to do this one with her brother - I made it into a .gif! I think it came out really cool - it makes me happy to see her try and stretch her creative muscle.

Canon EOS REBEL T3 | f/8.0; ISO100; Shutter Speed: 6.0; Lens: 18-55mm

Hive account@i-am-wade got into the fun and created some really cool stuff that I captured and was able to use to make the following .gifs in Photoshop.

Canon EOS REBEL T3 | f/8.0; ISO100; Shutter Speed: 5.0; Lens: 18-55mm

Using the lasso tool and some masking I clipped parts of the photo apart and made them move across the screen. Making the .gifs from the original photographs is tedious to say the least - I have worked on all the images & gifs for this post all day long - since about 9 AM. But I think the patience paid off and I am really excited about the final results in this one. :)

I loved this friendly smiley face that Wade made - I photographed him doing this symbol twice and then composited them in photoshop.

Canon EOS REBEL T3 | f/8.0; ISO100; Shutter Speed: 5.0; Lens: 18-55mm

Me and the kids collaborated to make this one - it's me - J-VO! I went in and made some of the sparkles shoot off the page

I made this one by doing each of my letters then I composited them into photoshop using that lasso method I mentioned above so that I could manipulate each piece to create the .gif below.

I wanted to focus on creating steem themed or related graphics - these were what I created using my individual light paintings. For the "STEEMIT" one, I just took a picture of me doing each letter then stitched them together in a new composition in Photoshop.

my son made several writing ones - they were each so interesting - almost like graffiti that I wanted to make a still composite of all four. I feel like this represents our little four person family!

Well that wraps up all the images I created from this fourth of July related activity! I hope you enjoyed my work - if you guys have any cool long-exposure work that you would like to share please, do so below :)

As always, please re-steem if you think this post was worth sharing, comment if you have a question or something you would like to share and follow if you would like to see more of my shenanigans!

Until next time - Steem on!