Fun with a Glow-Stick

Every other year we clear everything off the deck and power wash the wood surface and apply a new coat of  water seal.  After a long day of performing the first half of the job I took my camera out in the yard for some evening shots to cover this week's blog.  I have a very nice close-up of a dandelion gone to seed that is back lit by the evening sun.  This was going to be my lead off shot for this week and some more flower shots as fill. 

After dark I remembered wanting to try some light drawing photography using a glo-stick. Amy and I had purchased some glow-sticks this past winter for a project that we never completed. Once we located them I decided it was now or never.  The night was very pleasant and best of all the deck was completely empty, offering a perfect place to play around.    To prepare I activated a stick and then attached it to a length of twine in order to allow for shots requiring swinging the light in an arc. 

I then setup the tripod and figured out a good location and exposure.  With a ten second delay on the camera I was able to start twirling the glow-stick with the attached twine in a circular motion.  By slowly spinning around while twirling the light, I attempted to generate a sphere of light.  The results were OK, but not as dramatic as I was hoping (the glow-sticks we have are pretty small and not too bright).

During one of my test shots, Doug came into the living room and turned on a light that resulted in ruining the exposure on the shot.  When I told him that I wanted the lights off he became curious as to what was going on and decided to join me.  We had a great time trying to draw shapes in the air and spell our names.  When I drew the heart using several passes, Doug didn't think it was going to turn out very good.  When we looked at the result on the camera's display we were both pleasantly surprised. 

This prompted further ideas, including the name spelling.  We ended the evening with Doug trying to combine the spinning circle with some extra painting to produce the face of a clock.  This took a couple of tries before he produced a nice clock face.  This was lot's of fun and having Doug join me made it all that much better.