You may remember the lowly Spirograph toy from your youth and the joy of geometric art it created. Now you can mix your love of old time kitschy toys with your love of lomo.
If you remember the theory behind the Spirograph toy from back in the day it is basically a plastic template that you can place a pen or pencil in a little plastic widget and then put that into another plastic widget and spin that pencil around to get very structured complicated looking geometric image. These kinds of images make it look like you have spent hours calculating formulas to build this atomic age treasure. Recently I stumbled upon a way to incorporate this technique with my love of lomo light painting.
A while back I got some LED patio umbrella lights. These lights are round plastic disks that are battery operated and have many little LED lights all around the boarder of the plastic disk. They are meant to go under the patio umbrella to light your summer evenings. I use them for good light placement on my long exposure still lifes. Recently I tried doing some light writing with them and found that the round disks do something crazy. If you don’t keep the lights on exactly the same dimensional plane when moving them then you get these dramatic and graceful lines and intersections of these lines. So basically if you spin the disk at all while moving it or move it closer or farther from the cam, or even turn the disk a little on its side during the light writing process you get these bizarre and intricate patterns.
You can even do like me and throw the disks through the air and catch it later just to see what happens. Additionally these umbrella lights can be adjusted by covering over some of the lights with color gels or even duck tape and by doing this you change the patterns by changing the color or blacking out lights and changing the patter of the lights. So try it out with your favorite long exposure camera and play like you did in elementary school.
17 comments
trashpilotin
this is awsome! i wonder where to get these discs... ;)
kylethefrench
ah i got mine at a local store in the springtime but you can get them anytime of the year on amazon or ebay, they are pretty cheap too
sobiksaabik
Very good idea!
bloomingwreath
9th photo is awesome!
trashpilotin
@kylethefrench found it on amazon, thanks for the idea :)
kerpella
FREAKIN COOL! Keep it up man!
kylethefrench
Can I say I really like that so many people like this tip
pepper-b
How cool!!!
lyndxe
incredible - thanks for the inspir(ograph)ation!
miss_maha
Amazingly awesome!
lakandula
Very inspiring work!
nock
The craziness of Light Graffitti! :)
clickiemcpete
So THAT'S how you did it! I was wondering... :)
pedrogalvez
I don't know if I'll can sleep tonight! I can't wait to get some light.
Thank you for come in!!
pedrogalvez
I don't know if I'll can sleep tonight! I can't wait to get some light.
Thank you for come in!!
welland
Great Tip
traaaart
whoa! i was just looking at your flicks of this and found this article! I have one of these lights and figured this out a couple months ago by accident!
http://www.lomograph(…)os/14469851
good call with the colored gels! that looks really cool!