About this limited edition photograph:

The light painted photograph “Luther College” was created at the Highway 52 Luther College sign in Decorah, Iowa.

I had always wanted to light paint this sign, but there were always very bright lights illuminating it, preventing me from doing so. One night I was driving past the sign and I noticed that both of the lights were off! I just happened to be returning home from light painting at a different location, so I already had all of my camera gear and light painting tools in the vehicle with me. I pulled over and promptly got to work. 

To create this light painted photograph I placed my Canon T3i camera on a tripod and I used a long exposure of 981 seconds. I used a red colored gel filter over the front of my mini flashlight and I traced out each mortar line by hand to illuminate them red. I then used a blue LED to trace out the border of each of the sign’s letters by hand. Finally, I stood behind the sign and fired off a roman candle firework at various angles to add lines of color. 

This photograph came off my camera as-is, and involved zero post-processing or Photoshop.

Nocturnal Designs © 2013.