I was getting into the Patriotic spirit and decided to use the Light Painting technique and make a chand sitara. I did two attemps, both are cool to me in their own and each way. Posting both of them. Almost burnt my finger making these.
Light Painting is basically you set a very low shutter speed or use Bulb setting in Manual mode of your DSLR and then you use a light source like a torch or something to paint. I used a lighter here, hence the fiery colours in the photographs.
Photos taken using my D90.
First photo shutter speed was 5.7 seconds and second photo shutter speed was 7.7 seconds.
Very talented work indeed! By the way, this gives me an idea - Almost no one seems to know this, but the art of pyrotechnics (which is the craft of making fireworks) is a very old tradition in some areas of Pakistan.
So let me suggest adding some color to this form of art. This is how you do it:
Add a little of either strontium carbonate, or strontium nitrate, or strontium sulfate into the flame for a blazing red color.
Add some calcium chloride, and you will get an orange colored flame.
For yellow, use sodium nitrate.
To get green, use barium nitrate or barium chlorate.
To get blue, use copper chloride or copper sulfate.
And to get purple, simply use potassium permanganate.
So this is how you get all the colors of the rainbow. But to get a brilliant white, you have to use magnesium sulfate. Just use all safety precautions before experimenting with anything that is related to fire - So always be outdoors (away from dry grass and leaves), and never forget to wear gloves and safety goggles.
Also add these chemical into the flame little by little to get an idea (no more then a match head at a time). I can't give you an exact ratio, as the purity of chemicals always varies from shop to shop - Which is why you will have to experiment and figure out your own quantities.
Thanks Shahbaz but to get different colours in Light Painting we use studio colour gels instead of chemicals. Chemicals make it a bit dangerous. However I took these photos last night at 1 AM in my room so I did not have colour gels or anything available to me. However, thank you so much for the extensive post about the colours and which chemicals to use to get those colours :)
