We at 4togsblog are proud to bring you another guest writer on the blog, introducing the exceptionally talented Michael Bosanko, who with a large creative talent and some simple lights paints magic into the air for you. Michael has worked on some big projects, which can be seen on his website (www.michaelbosanko.com) along with his other stunning work.

Light graffiti (also often known as light painting or light drawing) is a fantastic and creative way to express your artistic side, ‘draw’ silly shapes, or doing something you can enjoy with your mates. It needs to be dark when you do this, but essentially it can be done anywhere; at home, in the garden, or out in the wilds. The principles of light graffiti are not that far removed from waving a sparkler around on bonfire night to make swirling shapes; the only difference is that you are capturing the pattern or light trail on camera. You have complete control of the light source (try and think of torches like brushes with an endless supply of paint coming from them.)

There are some basic things you need to get you started:

• A camera (ideally a digital SLR) capable of taking long exposures
• A tripod
• At least one standard torch
• A dark space to create your masterpiece

Mount the camera on a tripod, then using the control dial, switch it to manual mode. Shutter speed can be set to 15-30 seconds, or if you have a remote cable release, switch the camera to Bulb mode which will allow you to take exposures lasting a lot longer. For the aperture setting, anything between f8-f11 is a good start. Choose ISO between 100-200.

Next step is to ensure your images are not blurry. One way to do this is to take the lens off auto setting and manually turn the focus ring, taking a few test shots as you go, or ask someone to hold a light source in frame and auto focus off the bright spot.

When you’re ready, hit the shutter button or cable release, step into frame, turn on the torch and start creating! If you do not have a cable release or you’re doing this on your own, you may wish to use the camera’s timer control, allowing you that extra few seconds to step into frame before you hear the ‘click’ as the camera starts exposing.

When you’ve finished painting with your torch, turn it off, return to the camera and finish the exposure.

Here are some basic examples to get you in the mood:

Once you’ve got the hang of it, take things a lot further by using different torches and try your hand at more elaborate shapes, There are no limits, so push your imagination. Most of all have fun!

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After several attempts at getting new triggers for my strobe flashes, I ended up with Pixel’s Pawn triggers and recievers. So far so good, no mis fires, no hassle at all really. They’re pretty sturdy and do the trick, which is all I wanted.

To try them out I took Dave out in search of the yellow fields we get in West Yorks, they’re not actually that yellow yet so ended up next to some field or other near Pontefract. I set up 3 lights – one with a silver brolly that has a soft-box like cover on it, so it looks like a little Westcott. Inside that I put the 580 EX2 at 1/2 power. That provided a pretty large source of soft light – in the photos this was lighting from the left in all the shots.

Off to the right, quite a distance away compared to the softbox, was a 550EX shooting plane hard light – that provides the light fill on the right of dave’s face

And finally, to light up the crop a little, I’ve got a 430EZ pointing down on the oil seed at 1/2 power – just so you get some of the crop showing as well as the sky retaining some colour.

All in all, pretty simple really, but quite like the results – the contrast of the large, close, soft light source to the left against the harsher, smaller distant light source to the right is pretty distinct

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