Interesting Photo of the Day: Epic Light Painting Self Portrait

Interesting Photos  •  Portrait Photography

Today’s Interesting Photo of the Day is a self-portrait made by Ian Hobson, a UK photographer who specializes in painting with light. All of his effects are done in-camera, without any post-processing enhancement. He uses many types of torches in his work, but this one was done simply with a speedlight and a light stick. With the camera on a tripod and a very long exposure, he held the flash behind his back and set it off, then advanced towards the camera waving the light stick – a wand with 15 small bulbs- in a spiraling pattern. The evenness with which he did this certainly shows his years of experience:

To create this self-portrait, the photographer fired a flash behind him and used a light stick to create the spiral (click to view full size, imgur)

This is only a recent image in a long, long history of incredibly light paintings. You can view his entire Flickr for more examples, and read some of our past tutorials on the methods behind these electric photographs.