Lightpainting a circuit board from 1992

A slight obsession of mine is to light paint with a circuit board. This usually involves a forest of light stands located around my kitchen while I stand in the dark waving various lights at a small circuit board. It's actually a quite enjoyable way to practice the dark art of lightpainting when it's raining outside or even when it's too damn cold to be brave enough to risk hypothermia!

So with the nights finally drawing in, I had an excuse to practice the dark art after I managed to salvage a circuit board from a 1992 gaming machine. I liberated the board before it was taken to the scrap yard!

So tonight was just a practice session to get "my eye in" and remind myself of what I've done in the past. It feels like an eternity since I last managed to practice "sook" as in straight outta the kitchen!

Lasermax Controller

The graphics embedded in to the board read, "Lasermax Controller" with a date of 1992. I'm not sure what game this board enable but it resembled an early graphics card because I saw no sign of a CPU, unless some geek out there recognises it?!

For the above shot, I used this lighting set up: (Forgive the terrible sketch, I'm a CAD designer by profession and this really is terrible!)

Behind the board I placed a Coast TX10 quad colour flashlight (or torch if you're British) to light up the backside of the board blue. I use specifically the TX10 because it shows up as blue through the board. Other torches with blue gels don't appear this colour; they turn out green, the same colour as the board. (There's some kind of weird colour science going on there!)

As you can see on the sketch, I place two small RGB LED cubes either side of the board at a really tight angle to cast side lighting on the board. The lighting doesn't work as well if you bring the lights further back towards camera.

As I practice lighting the board, it's great to experiment with positions of the lights and colours from the RGB panels. Timing of the lighting is as important.

Zoom pull

For this shot, I lit the board blue by lighting through the board with the Coast TX10 for only one second. I then turn off the TX10 and then zoom pull in or out with the two remaining RGB cubes. It's great to experiment and with different combinations of light position, timing and zoom effects, it's possible to achieve quite different results each time:

Note how the Lasermax graphics appear bigger as well as smaller in the frame. The continuous light source illuminates the text after I finish the zoom pull.

Blur

Sometimes I get so close to the board with macro extension tubes that when zoomed out, the image becomes out of focus. This is an effect I like and will likely appear in a future circuit board shot!

This one also has a little blur but as I say, only slight adjustments to timing, lights and focal length can make a difference:

On previous occassions, I used circuit boards with other elements:

Paranoia

This was a shot inspired by the Huawei story in the news where they were accused of state sponsored espionage and to be honest, at the time, I did wonder what data really is safe anymore.

This shot involved two lenses and two tripods swapped during a single exposure. For this it's necessary to swap lenses in complete darkness!

Live long and prosper

Another one of those unappreciated shots I post on social media where no-one understands what the heck they are looking at!

This is a shot of my own fat hand in silhouette on a light box. I first shoot my hand, then swap lenses in the dark and relocate the camera on another tripod pointed at a circuit board. This is all shot in one photographic exposure and took many many attempts to nail!!

Integrated Lightpainter

This is another lens and tripod swap shot but this time with @fadetoblack kindly appearing inside the chip. This was shot entirely on location and not in my kitchen this time!

Kinetic Nights

It's also good to place the circuit board out of parallel with the camera. The shallow depth of field created by using macro extension tubes leads to some great out of focus effect! I also added a kinetic stripe by moving the camera across the front of a multi-coloured bulb. I like a bit of kinetic stuff!

An extract of this image appears in the banner on my Peakd page.

I can't wait for darker nights to practice more circuit board shenanigans!

About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in urbex and artistic model photography. I'm always on the lookout for someone to collaborate with; please don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to create art.

Social Media
https://www.facebook.com/fastchrisuk
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fastchris/

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WHAT IS LIGHTPAINTING?
Lightpainting is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source while taking a long exposure photograph, either to illuminate a subject or to shine a point of light directly at the camera, or by moving the camera itself during exposure. Nothing is added or removed in post processing.

Single exposure Light Art Photography - no layers - no tricks - no photoshop

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