Some great examples here; some I've seen quite recently on other sites.

I've been creating light sculptures for some time now; all examples can be found on my site at http://www.michaelbosanko.com/portfolio8407.html

I wrote an article about it early this year in Digital Camera Magazine; turned out to be quite a popular topic.

I've yet top see this replicated in photoshop with any success. Actually, I don't understand why some people would even contemplate the idea.

Regards,
Michael Bosanko

The most beatiful is nineth picture

how in god's name did you get it un distorted from photoshop? this is freakin awesome! btw I stumbled this

i did this too
http://www.flickr.com/photos/urban_machine/1480944196/in/set-72157602372...

very nice collections thanks

Lightening is to dress up the light skillfully.
Veri nice, very nice.

I don't get the "explosion" one... How were they able to stay suspended over the ground long enough to be exposed on the shot?

SWEEET< :) i had to animate some of these. enjoy,

These pix above are awesome...
Below are a few of mine

You can check my site and see more at www.lightbombing.com

enjoy....

i took this one like a month ago, with my old Pentax cam, one that still used the negatives process...u know.. the really old ones.

http://www.fotolog.com/hazaelox/15595060

first timer from the greater goods of DC.

Nice pictures!

Im suprised to see this called Graffiti however it does tickle my fancy

Awesome

http://www.kishoreblog.com

Great art! Very good.

Mehr Bilder und ein Tutorial-Video unter http://www.localido.de/profil/beitrage_view.phtml?p=1&b=906

I have some too!
http://foto.viktor-dite.de/main.php?g2_itemId=1362

just made it tonight in a couple hours. if I had a better camera, more time and an extra set of hands....

I just had to try this out

DUDE!!! I LIKE ALL OF THEM

love the one on the side of the car. like a cool light.. now it only need speed trails...

It really amazes me just how many people lack knowledge and imagination and have to ask the over used question...........Is it shopped?(As in photo)

I was doing this sort of thing back in the early 80's before the advent of digital manipulation.

KIDS............You have the net at your disposal, get on it and educate yourselves.

i dont have any words to say for this kind of unique idea
hats off , awesome,.........rock on......

The Graffiti work is very unique, interesting, and imaginative. Cool indeed. The photos that I like best are; The purple car, the banks machines and the milk carton....the milk carton is crazy lol. Nice work :)

Honestly the best collection ive seen...great job.clever job.cool job. unique job. just perfect!

I cant begin to say enough about these. They are definitely one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time. Very creative indeed.

Regards

light painting rlz!

Nice pictures you got here. Cool concept and Good collection!

i love u r work ~

I've messed around with light graffiti a few times before. Never did anything as elaborate as some of the stuff shown in the article, but it's definitely a fun thing to mess withhere

Faci treaba foarte buna, daca ai vre-un tutorial despre cum faci as fii incantat sa-l urmez si eu :)

Multumesc

These are brilliant! On a much smaller scale I have some taken of one of my parents' revolving fibre-optic lights. I will try and post some.

Wow, wow, wow!!!
You must write a tutorial on that ;)

Hey there!

Thank you for linking my pictures :)
I'm glad that you like them!

Simon (flickr.com/simondehn)

"Just wondered if anyone here ever went to a cemetary and got pics similar to these but without using any lighting effects? "

Nope, no one did. Show me the proof to prove me otherwise.

And great photos!

Just wondered if anyone here ever went to a cemetary and got pics similar to these but without using any lighting effects? My daughter has and it would give you chills to see some of it.
*hums twilight zone music*
Try it you may be surprised at what comes up on your camera that you wouldn't have ever seen with the naked eye.
Ta ta for now
Yvee * * *

I just tried what MGK said. and it worked flawlessly!

Bravo!

One of my most popular photos on Flickr was done with light painting:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/snwbeast/2298243467/in/set-7215760402863366...

The technique is pretty simple. Have a dark area, set your camera on "bulb" (or long-exposure), with a middling f-stop (I used f6.3 in the above shot).

Let your subject move around (slowly) with the lightsource. This can be anything from a flashlight to an LED light to (in my case) glow-sticks from the Dollar Store.

At the end of the exposure if you want to "freeze" the subject just pop a flash off, that will light them up and freeze them. In the above example I fired the flash twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. Easy peasy.

-- C

How do you do a long-exposure of people mid-air? Obviously they didn't float in mid-air for 30 seconds. What about the one of the guy 'pouring' light from a container, he's stood against a brightly lit scene so surely the person 'drawing' with the light would have shown up on the camera too?

So for at least some of these photos there must have been some manipulation.

Freaking awsome ! I love that kind of effect ! :)

I don't get the "explosion" one... How were they able to stay suspended over the ground long enough to be exposed on the shot?

I guess great minds think alike. Here's a similar concept with some cool animation thrown in.

http://pikapikaproject.blog.so-net.ne.jp/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esLqgQ3s-pk&eurl=http://pikapikaproject.b...

Really cool stuffs in here ! Check mine if you're curious ^^

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23100241@N03/2213657551/sizes/l/

;)

I see some requests a tutorial on this. That can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eiriks/337964032/

Thanks for adding my pic to the list!

But there must be a person moving the light source. how come he/she doesnt get captured... ? just curious... otherwise ... great... !

Some of the pictures are made by a german group calling themselves Lichtfaktor, they have their own MySpace-page with lots more pictures and animations done in this technique at http://www.myspace.com/lichtfaktor

At the same time I have to pimp my own page with similar pictures at http://wlkr.deviantart.com :)

These foto are very nice!

Wow. Some of those are pretty fun! Thanks!

what camera did you use? cause im about to buy one but i still dont know quit sure wich to buy. i will appreciate.

For those of you that like the effect:
http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/how-to-create-intense-ligh...
http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/freebies/six-free-high-res-glowing-l...

Its easy enough to do with a cell phone or glowstick or led keychain and a camera that lets you control the exposure length. get you and some of your friends together in the jr highschool soccer field on night, get drunk and go crazy!

set your camera on a tripod so you can do multiple takes and layer the images in PS

The Red Hots did it a while ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epkhJJxRftA
I think they faked theirs a bit more than a lot of the people here. Some you can tell are done with multiple photos layered on top of eachother. The example above with the parallel lines was obviously mostly adobe, but, 2 pictures later in the same room it looks like the guy did a real one either using 3 photos or a real dark room and real long exposure! Great stuff, i need a tripod so i can do this stuff on my own!

These pictures are fantastic, but not the work of the author. If you pay attention and read the opening paragraph, he clearly states that these are from flickr. So while his upcoming pictures may be cool, don't congratulate him quite yet. I have a couple good ones of my own though.

http://a423.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/75/l_ff1520736f328ecacaf19...
http://a972.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/117/l_f397fb30388f76cb0b05...
http://a609.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/35/l_ec07faf735853953288b3...
http://a901.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/2/l_8b0b06c6247e6b6bd3fa03...

To the children:

This is not photoshop, this is light graffiti. Anyone who is educated in photography should know that, it's a very basic and old concept. Photoshop..well I have never seen anything that comes realistically close to light graffiti done in photoshop and I have been designing using Adobe and Photography for 8 years.

To the designer:

Very creative usage. I like what you did with painting hands on the vending machines and giving them characterisms. That was very new and cool. Look forward to more.

why dont you get your lazy ass out there and try to have some fun with photography instead of relying on photoshop for everything.

makes me sick

As far as I'm aware, there's no way to replicate this in Photoshop. As many other comments have said, you need a camera which allows for some degree of manual control(in other words, a dSLR. The little point-and-shoots I see everybody with probably won't cut it) and a dark area. I'm pretty sure that if you tried using PSDtut's Glow tutorial to get it to the standard in the photos you'd be there for a couple of days at least, and it won't be nearly as fun.

TO RECAP: THESE PHOTOS USE CAMERAS, NOT PHOTOSHOP. PLEASE READ THE COMMENTS.

I didn't expect seeing so many pictures from my hometown Aalborg here :)

me and my friend tried this also for the first time, not as amazing as these but some of them came out really well. Check them out:

http://www.tgnn.co.uk/light-graffiti-by-tgnn/

Very nice collection. I saw an Artist, who does georgeous "light-paintings" about a year ago but can't remember his name :(

@Scarlett, there is a tutorial at the comuter-arts-site:
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/2d__and__photoshop/painting_with...
I just looked at it quickly, but it seems to be ok.

Very Cool.
You have inspired me to try this.

I have to create similar things with my 400D

These are great! really cool stuff. It seems a shame you don't give the photographers credits.

Holy crap, those pictures are freakin awesome. Checked out the rest of the site and its amazing as well. Its probable that I may have found a new addiction to life other than ibeatyou.com Keep up the good work.

Excellent idea for a photography project.
I like the guy with a light guitar very much. I hope to create some similar pictures.

Thank you for sharing this art !

WOW you are very talented artist. :) I would love to read a tutorial of how to learn this technique. It looks cool ^^

Awesome works. Keep it up :)

This is a fantastic site. I just subscribed and look forward to more posts like this.
There are a LOT more "Light Paintings" just like these here.

Awesome pics!

You could probably do something like it on photoshop, though having no experience with the program, I wouldn't be able to give the slightest hint as to how it would be done.
The down side with doing it artificially is you won't get the cool reflections on surrounding surfaces (eg, see the second from the bottom; the colours are reflected from the walls), unless you spend a lot of time editing the pic.. *razz* easier to do it with a camera (that allows adjusting of the shutterspeed) and some glowsticks.

Welcome to Life 2.0, enjoy the ride...

lichtfaktor 4 eva!!!!

wow, i found your site through digg.com somehow and this is crazy! These pictures are amazing. As for the website overall i'm loving it X3 i'll be sure to visit this site as often as kids do on myspace!

Fantastic collection of images!
This is something I definitely want to try now.

I hope they cleaned up that mess, crazy kids and their light graffiti :P

I love these, but I prefer real graffiti!

Great art! Perhaps you should have a look to the beautiful PikaPika Project!
http://pikapikaproject.blog.so-net.ne.jp/

When I was introduced to this concept it was called Light Painting (for those of you who were looking for a different name for this).

A similar effect can be pulled off in Photoshop using a similar method described in PSDtut's Glow tutorial.

light graffiti a bad name? i think thats an awesome name. btw amazing work :]

Those are awesome :)

to the person who referenced the spring commercials...

some friends of mine are in a band called the willowz and they shot a music video with Tobin Seymour using time laspe cameras with light graffiti about a year or so before the sprint commercials came out.

i'm not saying he "invented" this or anything... but those sprint commercials always remind me of that video.

i'm in the process of doing some photography like this myself :)

very creative.. :) what kind of camera was used to take these pics?

tommy
http://www.mygraffitiwallpaper.com

If you think this is PS or AI you are a @#!%@$%, This is classic long exposure on a Digital SLR Camera.

Hey,

sorry for my bad english, im french.

for those asking how was it done :

the simpliest and easiest way is not with photoshop at all !
those pictures, are real pictures, made with 2 things : a camera (reflex-digital) and lights (white, blue, red, green, as you want, since its some pretty powerfull light)
all you have to do, is set up a good obturator speed (like 30s for example) so that you have time to "draw" your stuff with your lights, as if you were tagging some wall invisibly.

the obturator then closes up, your picture is taken, and voila ! your lights will remain on it, because of the speed light, but since you moved to make the drawing, you won't appear (or as a mid-hollow man) and you will obtain some gorgeous effet :D

try it, beleive me, its fun.

nb : test it with some kick-ass lights, the result will be a lot better than with your mobile's light ! you just have to see the 4th picture from the end to notice the powerness of the light (the room is in the dark during the shoot)

oh, just noticed tim comment, but well, better two comments on a "How to" than none ^^

waiting for a PSDtuts on that ;)

As for a "better name" for this I like "Light Lapse Art"

haven't really done much of this. but basically, you just set your camera to a long exposure time, and adjust the F-stop to account for the amount of light. make sure the subject stays very still and the camera is on a tripod, or somehow stabilized. then press the shutter and draw your 'graffiti' with some sort of bright light. the person holding the light will barely show up, if at all since they are not very bright and moving relatively fast. most point and shoot digital cameras don't let you set the f-stop and exposure time, but some do (I think my camera is a Canon A-75 and it lets me do it). playing with long exposure times leads to a lot of fun stuff in addition to 'graffiti' such and pictures with a still background and a subject that is blurred and appears to be in motion.

someone's got to come up with a better name for this... has anyone stopped to think that it's not actually graffiti???

Totally awesome?? For sure. Graffiti?? No.

thank's to LightFactor team.

Thanks!!!

Is there any tutorials on this? I would love to try it

I have a feeling that some of these are done with real lights, but some must be photoshoped.
You would do it similar to the lighting tutorials, using color dodge and multiply.

http://abduzeedo.com/magic-lighting-effect-photoshop
http://abduzeedo.com/amazing-photoshop-light-effect-10-steps

I still think you should make a tutorial though Abduzeedo, I think it would come out great.

Really nice . But this done with Photoshop ? or Illustrator :S

Cool! How is this done?

More coverage in more areas.

Only with Sprint®

nice collection :)
any way of producing this on Photoshop?