Surreal Skatepark Light Paintings

Hey pandas, let’s meet another super creative artist – Ben Matthews (actually, he’s a dentist!) – and see what happens when you do night photography and skate with some lights on.

The technique he uses is called light painting, also known as light drawing or light graffiti. This type of light art is usually made at night or in a darkened room by moving a hand-held light source or by moving the camera. The real trick is using a long exposure on a camera to capture multiple frames of motion into one. Maybe you’ve done some sparkler photos spelling out words by moving the sparkler quickly. In many cases, the light source itself does not have to appear in the image: the term light painting also encompasses images lit from outside the frame with hand-held light sources. The first known person to do light trail photography was Man Ray in his series “Space Writing” [1].

“I’m a dentist with a seemingly abundant amount of time to dedicate to different photography techniques. I hope you like them. I’ve been taking photos for about 9 years, and been taking them more seriously for about 5 years. I go through phases in my photography, depending on what I’m inspired by, and toys I particularly need/want. Right now, I think I’m at the end of a light painting phase, but we’ll see…” (ben matthews :::)

Well, let the images speak for themselves! Enjoy this collection of creative photography using sparklers, glowsticks and plenty of imagination!