One of my favorite activities to do at the Children’s Museum of Houston is our light painting where we take a photo of lights that the kids wave around. For those not familiar, here’s the rundown of the process:

When we see things, we are actually sensing light bouncing off of objects. Digital cameras work in much the same way. But, cameras have a continual build-up of the light on the sensors, so if there isn’t enough light your images look dim or “underdeveloped” while too much light makes them washed out or “overdeveloped.” So, cameras have a device in them called the shutter which limits the amount of light that the sensors capture. In most daytime photos, it is a very quick open-and-shut. Direct sunlight requires even faster while dim rooms require slower shutter speed.

In the case of Light Painting, I’ve set my camera to have a manual shutter speed, meaning so long as my finger is on the button, the shutter remains open. I can do this because my primary goal isn’t to take a picture of a person or an object, but rather of the light. The kids then wave around a variety of lights in a dark room while I hold open the shutter, allowing my camera to capture all the lights’ motions, creating a light painting. I upload them all to Flickr so people can later go download their images here.

I’ve attached a few of the ones from yesterday. Enjoy!