Flowers In The Watering Can...: Light Painting and Trails

I have been a big fan of photography since I took it up as a GCSE. I then carried it through the A-Level, and was thinking of taking it as a career... however I decided against it in the end, as I can still enjoy it as a hobby.
So, when David asked me if I would help him on his latest project I couldn't say no!
He was asked by our friend's band, Theory 59, if he would design the cover for their new EP which will be released very soon, check them out here and here. Their vision was to have light trails of cars coming from both sides of a road, neither of us had done this type of photography before and I left my DSLR in Leeds so we had to do with David's Lumix Digital camera, but overall we did well!

There is a difference between Light Trails and Light Painting, both involve the camera to have a very slow shutter speed, to be able to capture the light moving while the photograph is being taken.

Light painting is using a torch or a lighter to create lines and patterns where as light trails is the light that is captured from a car, bus or lorry. These examples were our first attempts which I don't think we could have done any better with the location we were at.

The second night we went to Country Park to capture some more light painting photographs in a better landscape and as there is a lake we could capture the reflection of the light on the water. On the way we stopped off at the Poundshop and purchased 2 torches, one red and one blue which were also glow sticks. The night wasn't a total success, we had to jump onto the jetty to take the photographs which was a challenge, then David's camera ran out of battery.

NOTE: If going out taking photos remember to charge your camera beforehand!

Luckily I brought my compact with me, so we proceeded to take more photographs but they weren't as good as we couldn't capture the reflection properly. From then on, we just messed about until it started to rain, so we decided to pack up and make our way home, which ended with David dunking his foot in the lake and me desperately needing the loo. Overall it was a hilariously bad night!

^^ This is my favourite shot of the night, I love the lighting in the background and the silhouette of my fluffy hood

On the third night of shooting we changed location again, this time we were shooting the light trails of the cars driving on the fly over. We took several photos on different parts of the road to try find the best shot.

After I had taken the photographs, it was over to David to do the editing! In the end we over lapped two of the images that we liked, taken in the same position just with different light trails and adding the EP writing and

tadarrrrr, the finished product