Artist Research

Michael Bosanko

Night Trails

Light painting photographer Michael Bosanko has been capturing light since 2004. He discovered light painting on accident, Michael says this of his moment of discovery, “the moon formed part of the scene, but the camera shake caused the moon to make a streak. My curious mind clipped the camera from the tripod and, hand held, I attempted to “write” my partner’s name using nothing but the moonshine and the movement of the camera in my hand, and I had success. As soon as I returned home, I adopted the same principles but with torches, and I’ve been hooked ever since.” Ever since that moment Michael has had great success with light painting photography, he has created images for several commercial clients and been published in numerous magazines. 

Contact Sheets

For this photoshoot, I positioned my tripod central overlooking a motorway at around 11 at night as I wanted it to be as dark as possible, so the light stood out prominently. I set my camera to a 20 second shutter speed with an aperture of F22. The formal elements of the picture is line and colour. I developed this image in photoshop firstly by changing the levels. Then adjusting the colour balance to make the white line have a blue tint to it which contrasted well with the red. I turned the contrast slightly up to add more depth to the lines of light. The saturation was turned up to emphasise on the colours and then the vibrance was turned slightly down to make the photo more realistic.

Here I experimented with crop on photoshop as there is a lot of white space. The original photo I took had a blue tint to it as I shined a blue light briefly over the camera. I liked this experiment as every photo is unique and the red and orange lights really stand out, allowing the lines to be the main focus. 

Font and Logo

Contact Sheets

For this shoot I set my camera to a 10 second shutter speed with an aperture of F20.  This photoshoot was very fun, experimental and unique in terms of each outcome being different. I used my phone light to create the shapes and used glow sticks for the flares of colours demonstrated. This photoshoot represents light and movement, which relates to energy and dynamism.