Painting with Light

June’s beautiful picture of London’s iconic Battersea power station at night impressed us this month and takes the top spot. While it might not have the most elaborate light painting we’ve seen in this month’s contest, keeping things simple has allowed her to perfect her composition with the wonderful blur, red orange and white lights from the trains guiding the eye through to the station in the background. The Battersea towers have lights on them which help them to pop out and by shooting in the blue hour she’s retained some lovely moody light in the sky without it turning totally black.

Tom’s eye-catching fire spin shot was taken at Liverpool Castle in Rivington where he tells us, “The trickiest bits for me were to get the exposure and timing right as I was on my own and whilst I did some test shots it was hard to get the timing right. However, it only took me a couple of attempts and I was very pleased with the result.”

Cornwall has some of England’s best dark skies and with such low levels of light pollution it’s no surprise that Michael’s astro landscape of Wheal Coates prominently features the galactic core of the Milky Way in the heart of his image. The engine house is also illuminated from the inside with a warm and cosy orange light drawing the viewer’s eye in. Great job!

It looks like photographer Marcin had some fun in the studio experimenting with a combination of flash and light painting to create these colourful and eye-catching portraits of model Roxu. A shutter speed of ten seconds allowed just enough time for him to move purple and blue lights through his scene to make a colourful backdrop, while a powerful flash froze his model still at the end of his exposure.

Wayne has captured a mesmerising shot here using a lit wire wool and spinning it around in a metal whisk. The bright sparks were caught on a 62 second exposure which illuminated the inside of Rydal Cave in the Lake District. Great job!

It looks like Paulo has found the perfect spot to do some light painting with his model. He's had plenty to juggle with this shot from directing his model, to dialling in camera settings and then getting into position to create the light graffiti with his wands - but it's all been made worthwhile after creating this unique and head turning portrait.

Christoph has taken an immense landscape of the road snaking through a valley in Trollstigen, Norway. It's full of moody clouds and heavy atmosphere and his long exposure of 30 secs has allowed him to transform car headlines into long colourful trails which bring the foreground to life.

Zara’s minimalist approach caught our eye this month with this stripped back still life earning a place in our Top 10. She carefully positioned a wine decanter and glass on a clean black background and precisely aimed her red and blue lights on either side to bring out the lovely edges and contours of the glassware.

Peter's clever and colourful light painting still life might be simple but it delivers maximum impact. By placing a sparkler behind a light bulb he's created thousands of colourful sparks over his six second exposure which pull the viewer's eye directly to his focal point.

Dee Dee has created a fascinating piece of light painting art here, using a long light wand and a long exposure of five seconds to create a vibrant orange glow behind her model. Shooting on the water gives her composition a lovely reflection and shooting in the blue, or magic, hour gives some great cool contrast to her bright orange focal point.