Light combo at the beach (Lightpainting)

Hello Hive community!

I hope this year will be a bit more optimistic than the previous one 🤞

I decided to spent the first days of the year on the coast, to have a breath of fresh air and enjoy the beach. The flat was 2 minutes away by walk from the beach, very convenient 😎

I took my bags and chose a nice spot on the sand dune, at an authorized location of course (we have to respect the dunes if we love beaches). After a couple of minutes of reflexion, an idea popped into my head : a camera rotation/lens cap trick combined with abstract light-calligraphy, using the wooden stairset at the beach entrance to draw my "canvas". I had to find something different than using the landscape and the sunset because I wanted to do something really different than the day before of course.

For that one, I worked with 2 back-to-back tripods :

• The tiny one for the first part, the abstract light-calligraphy work, with a RGB LED stripe monted on an aluminum rod like a light saber, a small RGB LED stripe monted in a tiny wood box and a couple of tiny LEDs (orange and blue),

• The big one for the kinetic phase, using the wooden structure, a powerful flashlight and two Lee colour filters (light-blue and orange).

I drew the calligraphy then I capped the lens, moved my camera to the second tripod without ending the long exposure and removed the cap to resume my long exposure by working with the wood parts the the pattern I imagined for the background of my picture.

I could have put more effort on the calligraphic job, it's a bit messy but decent, isn't it?

328s - 16mm- f/5.6 - 100 ISO

Lightpainting created in real time, captured to the camera in one single photographic frame.
No layers /no Photoshop / no editing exept minor adjustments (lens correction profite, WB, contrast (+12)) and addition of my logo.

Gear :
Canon EOS 6D body
Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS II USM lens
Canon RC-E6 IR remote
Zomei carbon tripod
Benro A4770TN tripod
Jobu-Design Heavy Duty Gimbal Head Mk IV

Jan 2021

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