After last week’s amazing Decim8 experiment, we want to move on to portraits.  Making portraits in LightBomber is a crazy process.  Lightpainting favors things that are moving.   Portraits, on the other hand favor sitting still.  However, this doesn’t mean that light painting portraits are not possible.  All you have to do is embrace the chaos of a moving person, an open shutter, and a bunch of bright lights.  Sometimes the results are beautiful, sometimes they are insane.  

The inspiration for this whole series comes from a Lightbomber named Sae, who seems to deal exclusively in portrait shots.  She stabilizes her camera, and then points all manner of crazy laser lights on her subject.  The brighter lights will freeze her subject, while adding extra laser-y chaos to the shot.  You’ll also notice multiple faces in her shots.  This is done by illuminating your subject, then having them move to a different part of the frame, then illuminating them again.  All of this is best done in the dark.

This following shot was done by us.  The iPhone was stabilized using a tripod, the lights are just LEDs that we passed behind Michelle.  To illuminate her face, we just pointed a yellow light at it very quickly, then turned it off.  The quicker you are with the light, the sharper your subject will be.

To take this concept further, the amazing iPhoneographer DocPop did some great portrait work with a technique known as “flashjacking”, where you stabilize your camera and use an external flash with colored gels.  Learn more here.

Check out more LightBomber portraits in the gallery to the left, and get LightBomber here.