Patrick Rochon - Light Painting Master

This photographer I have included because his work is huge inspiration for me.  Whilst looking at light painting for around the pole and using it in my long exposure images that I will test out - I just found his works fascinating.  The photographer who calls himself the 'Light Painting Master' creates truly strange and amazing works just using light painting by himself. 

Patrick Rochon is a Light Painting Master – his amazingly stylized and visually complex photography  is created by using lasers to illuminate his subjects in ways that create an eerie, otherworldly feel in the finished portraits. Patrick has also taken light painting to a whole new level by building costumes of lights and performing light painting on a giant screen to create a unique visual experience.  

I love looking at his work, its fascinating - here's his website for more light painting images!!

For the images above, Rochon says how working with 'Butoh' a contemporary dance group born in the sixties, he started light paintings and live performances with them. Rochon talks about how comfortable there were and barely spoke because of the shooting and moves in unique ways with their bodies. He also says how for the dance groups, "the light just came out of me", just the right touch, just the right colours, just the right timing, just the right exposure.

With this kind of photography it could always go so well and then could also go quite bad, with some great results and some no so good results.  This is one thing I worry about before my ideal shoot - whether it will actually work out, or if I will get the lighting right for the lights to be seen.  But all things I will have to work out on the spot - trail and error is best for light paintings.

These images of Rochon's really catch my eye and I know that if I saw them at exhibition, they would be so incredibly striking and would stand out.  I think this is one of the reasons I want to try and make this happen and try out light painting with my pole dance model, so that the lights can stand out. But these portraits that this photographer has painted with a ray of different light colours looks amazing and strange.  I would think a lot of practice would go into creating these. For me I wouldn't even know where to point the light lasers, but it would be worth a shot.  I have once before used a torch to paint the  subject myself, and it worked great, so this is the same but with an upgrade to coloured lasers.

Some of the portraits really do look quite eerie, with the sharp bright lights, but I will seriously consider trying these effects for my portfolio some time in the future.  But for this project - what I will take away from this is the way the lights can be used when shooting portraits in the dark - it has also made me realise that the LED light will definitely work and that I should try my hardest to find the lights to use.

www.patrickrochon.com