Photography Light painting.

On Saturday night, after our photography soirée, we convinced Pete the Photographer to stay the night rather than make the long drive home. 

He had a wee rest and chat, then took advantage of the stunning lightning show going on in the distance. The lightning made the sky absolutely glow behind these images.

We had quite a few kids here- my daughter's friends and of course my boys- plus husband.

He put them to good use!

We had a heap of sparklers in the cupboard, so out they came. Plus all the torches we could find. 

I had been trying to get the bulb function to work on my camera, but was failing. Pete helped me set my camera to a 30" shutter speed, f13 and ISO400 and flick the lens focus to manual. 

FYI it wasn't on a tripod, just sitting, balancing on a stool, plus I had my wide angle lens on- set at 16mm. I have never shot in full manual before, only partially in AV or TV mode. This was something I have wanted to have a go at for a while.

I was a bit slow getting this one -so the 2 outside sparklers had almost died by the time I pressed the shutter. For your interest Sparklers last just over 30 seconds. The red streak is the little fella throwing a red headlamp up in the air behind them.

Stars! I was a bit off to the side, away from Pete, but then I moved closer so that I got a frontal view.

More red streaks and the Nintendo symbols, but the cross looks a bit like a bow! The kiddos took note and learned from this.

Someone ran in front of us with a torch and then shone it at us!

Here the kids were running around and then shining their torches at us and up into the tree.

Again just running all about.

And my favourite of the night.

The kids had sparklers and ran back and forth in front of us while taking them up and down like waves in the ocean. 

The girls tried to get a Christmas tree, but it didn't work all that well, again they learned from it.

A red star and a white star??

And this was the spookiest shot of the night. the kids all shone the torches onto their faces and moved about. They looked like ghostly figures.

Then the rain came in and put some droplets all over my lens. which made things kinda interesting.

But then it got to the point where we couldn't see anything and it was pretty cold. 

It was also about 2.15 am. We came inside and loaded the photos up and onto Facebook! Finally hitting the sack at about 3am.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pete went home on Sunday morning having another workshop going on, but we laid about like big sloths as the temperature climbed to 43.8 degrees. The girls spent about 6 hours in the pool trying to keep cool. Eating huge tubs of ice cream and playing music REALLY loudly on the old stereo I set up outside!!!

We had the mates stay on for a few nights as there was a terrific storm on Sunday night in town and on the other side of town, where these mates live. It wiped out power to 26 000 homes. We had our generators out on loan and kept the girls here rather than them being at home with no power and horrible heat.

So they had me at it again on Monday night with my old camera that my daughter has taken over (a Canon 400D). My kids have been so inspired by Pete and his energy and enthusiasm, that they are walking about with cameras all day long!

They think they are rather skilled at this light painting now and have developed some new ideas.

They perfected the Christmas tree.

Love hearts.

Stars

Nintendo symbols

P3AC3 hahahahaha!!

or rather PEACE

Ha ha! EVOL- I didn't say a word until they saw it!

He He!

Running with torches.

And then they got creepy. 

The idea was to just jump up and down on the spot while I shone the big torch on them.

Looks like something out of a horror movie right??

Then they made the little fella sit on the ground while they jumped around him and I shone the torch from person to person.

 This freaked them out so much that the plans to sleep out on the trampoline were quickly abandoned!!

I have to say though that these sparkler ones are still my Favourites!

Does everyone have enthusiastic kids for this sort of stuff or is it just me??