Patrick Rochon

Patrick Rochon

Creative shoot with Jennyfer Desbiens + Anicko

Patrick Rochon is a photographer best known for his light paintings. He used to do 'traditional' photography but in 1997 when he flew Tokyo he decided to dedicate all his time to his art and called himself a light painter and never did traditional photography again. In most of his light paintings he always collaborates with dancers and performers, fashion, high-end products, nudes and cars.

light paintings are easy to create. At night or in the dark, put a camera on a tripod or on a stable flat surface. open the shutter on the camera for an extended period of time, then with a light or multiple lights move around in front of the camera. Close the shutter on the camera when the painting is finished. There are two ways you can create light paintings, you can either light paint onto a subject so that certain areas are lit up or you can turn the light towards the lens to draw what you want. The exposures can be as long as you want or as long as you camera allows.

Toyota Altezza, Japan 1998

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8-daGvcwJc

While Patrick Rochon was in Japan he was introduced by photographer Mark Higashino to Itaru Sugita an art director and graphic designer. In 1998 Itaru Sugita was working on a presentation for Toyota Altezza and Patrick Rochon said "why don't you light paint it?" as a joke but he said it's a good idea and that's when ideas started flowing as to how to illuminate the car in a light painting.

He first started by light painting on a miniature toy car with aluminium foil in the background to present the concept to Toyota. He then went on to test it on a real car. They did a test in the studio with a different car then the Altezza, all with 4x5 format cameras, shooting with 4 or 5 different cameras and one being Polaroid film. They shot for 2 days in the studio then presented it to Toyota and spent one more day shooting with Patrick Rochon adding his style to it. On the day of the shoot he had music blasting while he was dancing around with the light painted on and around the car. He did about 15hours of light painting a day over a period of 3 days in a row. some of the camera exposures lasted up to 30 minutes. Patrick Rochon and Toyota ended up doing an exhibition at Spiral Hall in Tokyo, they had post card books, posters in subways and magazine pages. They also did a promotion video shoot with light painting directed by Keiichiro Mukai.   

In his series of paintings of the Toyota Altezza he used various coloured lights to create a dramatic effect to illuminate the car. He used both forms of creating light paintings in his work. He shone the lights directly at and around the car to create coloured reflections off of the car, he also shone the lights directly at the camera lens to create different forms of light. The lights may look like they have been randomly drawn but I think that care and precision has gone into thinking about the reflections are different shapes that will be on and around the car. I personally like this series of light paintings to his other paintings. I like the fact that he has done work with other subjects rather than just people, as there is more elements within the photographs such as the reflections and use of the spacing around the car. 

Light Terminology

                              Light Terminology

Back Lighting

Back lighting is when the light source is facing towards the viewer with the subject in between, This causes the subject to darken and sometimes causes a glow around the edges of the subject. Back lighting is the process of illuminating a subject from the background and often creates a silhouette effect.

Front Lighting

Front lighting is a lighting technique in which the light source is directly in front of the subject. This accentuates details of the subject, however it often results in the subject looking flat particularly in portraits. 

Soft Lighting

Soft lighting is when a light source creates a wraparound effect upon a subject this causes no harsh edges. Soft light means that the light that falls on the subject comes from multiple sources, from multiple directions or from a single, very large light source quite close to the subject that avoids harsh bright and dark areas, creating a gradual transition from highlights to shadows.

Hard Lighting

Hard light is light that comes from a single source, such as a light bulb, and falls directly on the subject from one direction without being reflected off other surfaces. It generally casts dark shadows and produces high contrast pictures with deep black and bright highlights. The shadows also generally have a very distinct or hard edge, so that the outline of the object closely reflects the shape of the shadow.   

Studio Lighting

Studio lighting doesn't mean it has to be set up in a studio, it can be used in various locations. The most common lights used on studio lighting are strobe, HMI, tungsten and fluorescent. Umbrellas and soft boxes are also used with the lighting. Soft boxes generates a shadow less diffuse light from a large surface. Umbrellas reflect the light and generally create a defused light source.

Natural Lighting

Natural lighting is the most accessible form of lighting. Natural lighting is either daylight (sunlight) or moonlight. 

Torch Lighting 

Torch lighting is illuminating certain areas of a subject by pointing it directly towards the subject to create a spotlight effect.

Laser Lighting

Laser lighting is commonly used in light paintings.They are created by using various coloured laser pens and a camera with a slow shutter. It is better to use a DSLR rather than a SLR as you can view your image straight away after the image is taken.

Photoshop Light Paintings

Photoshop Light Paintings 

These are some examples of light paintings created in Photoshop. 

The first stage of making light paintings in Photoshop is by creating a new layer over your selected image and by selecting the paths tool draw over the image in lines and swirls. Select the brush tool and adjust the settings to what effect you want. In the paths window select the paths then click on stoke path. Go to blending options then outer glow and inner and adjust the settings. The Second stage is to create a new layer, select the brush tool and the colour to white. Go to the brush presets, change the size, the spacing, the scattering, and the size jitter. Use the brush tool do draw around some of the previous lines. Using the layer blending options add some outer and inner glow then reduce the opacity of the layer. For stage three, go back to the layers you drew the paths in, click the layer and press delete. A final thing that can make the image look good is by clicking the background image, going to image-adjustments-hue and saturation, select colourize and make the image all one colour.

For more information on how to create light paintings in Photoshop click here.

Digital light Paintings

Digital Light Paintings

The light paintings below were created by using my 14 mega pixel Fujifilm JX530 digital camera. I had it on the Night Tripod setting which allowed a maximum shutter speed of 5 seconds. This meant that the drawings had to be simple shapes as they had to be quickly drawn. I experimented with using a torch to created the different shapes. I then went onto using two torches and placing pieces of tissue paper over the light so that it created different colours. 

The image below was edited in Photoshop. the first photo I took was the halo shot, and the second was one wing. To make sure that the wings were the same I only took one picture then loaded them into Photoshop and duplicated the wing image so that I had two, I then flipped it and selected the overlay mode so that they were both visible. I set the mode of the halo image to overlay as well so that the final image looked like an angel.

These were created by setting my digital camera to night(tripod). Using this setting it allows me to take an image with a slow shutter speed. I put my camera on a tripod, turned off all the lights in the room, pressed the shutter and drew the image. It was hard to draw actual pictures using the digital camera as I didn't have long to draw an image because the shutter exposure was too short and could not be adjusted any further.

Glow Doodle Light Drawings

Glow Doodle Light Drawings

 Light drawings are created using a photographic technique whereby exposures are made, usually at night or in a dark room, by moving a hand-held light source or moving the camera. Light paintings can be traced back as far as 1914 when Frank Gilbert and his wife used small lights and the open shutter of a camera to track the motion of manufacturing and clerical workers. 
Light paintings can also be done interactively by using a webcam. Whilst the images are being drawn, it can be viewed on the monitor or a video projector. For the images below I used a webcam to capture the painted images. These images were created by pointing a light source towards the camera whilst moving the light. I used two different light sources to create the images below. 

For these images below I directed the light source at the object not towards the webcam. I moved position so that there was a repeat pattern of the object on screen.

My Photography

Goodbye summer... Hello winter 

SLR Photography

SLR Photography 
I captured some still life shots using my SLR camera. I set up a small scene area with a variety of objects and used a lamp to create the lighting on the different objects. I tried to use objects that were metal so that the light would reflect off the objects.

First I done a test strip of my contact sheet to see what settings I need to set the enlarger to to make a contact sheet.

I set the contrast filter on 5, the aperture on the enlarger to f8 and the timer to 4 seconds. 

I then chose some the best compositions to use to make a perfect print with. I found the grain for every negative I chose, I then set my contrast filter to 5, enlarger aperture on f8 and made a test strip of this image. Once it had been developed I decided on how long I needed to expose it to the paper for.