CRDESIGNLAB

Well, I don’t think there’s a unit of time long enough for how overdue this post is!!!!! This is the first of three posts that I started but never finished, so here I am, trying to finish it. I could smash everything into another mega-post like The 3 Part Explosion or Four Days in the Mud, but I think I will just write a few smaller posts. That way more people are likely to read them.

As you might have guessed, the title of this posts references Star Wars. I have been a fan of Star Wars for as long as I can remember, and have become a collector of sorts: I have three very expensive and very realistic lightsaber replicas (one of Mace Windu’s saber, and one of Darth Maul’s, which separates into two to simulate what Qui-Gon does in the movie). I also happen to be an accomplished light painter. When you put those two things together, you get the image that is featured on this post, as well as the three ones like it that are now sitting happily on my light painting gallery.

On Sunday night, after I came home from the SDSU Library, where I had been working on Specialties, I decided to try out an idea that I had had for a while and which Mr. Skocko had suggested: using lightsabers to light paint. I had tried it before, but because I did not know as much about the camera as I do now, the result was a mess. This time, the result was spectacular. My sister, her friend, and I spent two hours outside, perfecting the settings and technique of painting with a three foot beam of light. We took about 40 photos, with exposures as long as four minutes, where I manned the camera as they painted the world with light. By the time we called it a night, I was shaking with excitement. I knew that we had made something spectacular, something that would make Mr. Skocko proud, and something that would make it into that book.

Over the past two days, I have taken the best four of those 40 images into Photoshop and have improved them somewhat. The originals were really good, so there was not much to be done. I leave this post at that: now on to the next one.