I have a great deal of interest in digital photography, but my life is as crazy as anyone else’s. My son, family, and work keep me busy from dawn to midnight every day. I’ve never had time to cultivate any photography skills, even though I’ve always been very interested, sitting on the edge of my seat, if you will, for a chance to take some digital photos in order to learn a little about how capturing light can create astonishing works of art.

My interview with Matthew Danser had given me my long sought “excuse” to try out some photography techniques. But it also required that I put in an honest effort. The thought in the back of my head: These photos are going to suck. Probably a lot. And they will most likely be seen by the thousands of people who visit this blog monthly. Second gulp.

But I’m the kind of person so riddled with ADHD that even my paranoia about being judged on a mass scale can only last about three minutes before the audacity to try anything resurfaces and action is taken. So here’s what happens when a total amateur who has no idea what he is doing tries to “Paint with Light.”

A one-dollar flashlight from – you guessed it – the Dollar General. One dollar. Even. Gotta love it. Especially since it’s all I could afford, seeing as how I’m still paying off the aforementioned Nikon that I bought to take photos of our baby son. (True, a million pictures have been taken of him during his first year-and-a-half on Earth. However, 999,999 of those photos were taken with an iPhone. Go figya.)

THE PLAN, STAN:

The plan was to wait until it was dark in the apartment and do some light painting. I knew that I could use the Shutter mode on my camera to set it to take exposures of up to thirty seconds. I saw that my camera also had an option for bulb release, so, invoking Danser, who recalls how his girlfriend had to hold down the button on his camera for a full thirteen minutes, I determined that if I asked really nicely, I might be able to persuade my wife to hold down the trigger to get exposures longer than thirty seconds. Otherwise, thirty seconds was my window of time to do all the light painting I could.

I started off pretty timidly. I had seen photos online in which people used long exposures to create squiggly lines. The most popular examples are pictures of traffic at night, headlights and tail lights streaming, giving you a sense of the fluid motion of busy intersections. You’ve also seen those nature pics in which streams and rivers and clouds and stars become gauzy with movement because of long exposures.

But what I really like about Danser’s work is the use of color. The effect of running inside the hut and popping off red-gelled flashes shown at the beginning of this blog post (Matthew Danser! And happy lightpainting, everyone!

Right this instant you are probably enjoying light provided by a CFL or an incandescent bulb. Buying and installing this kind of light sources is an automatic process. It`s popular, you buy it and when it does not work anymore you just go to the store and replace it. Little do people know about the hidden dangers of these light sources and their utter inefficiency, not to mention the way they damage the environment.

Let`s take each one and see why they are not the best option.

Incandescent bulbs have been around for a long time, being quite simple and cheap. While in the past they may have been revolutionary, today they are ineffective and their production will soon be stopped. Incandescent bulbs have several disadvantages and can`t even compare to, for example, LED lighting:

Sure, manufacturers strive to create better variations but they are all costly and do not improve the initial concept by a whole lot.

CFL are much better than incandescent bulbs and replaced the latter in many places but they are still not quite the best option, even if they can last up to 12000 hours (no match to LEDs, which go up to 200000 hours). What are the problems?

A deep and attentive analysis like this one reveals just how many things we are used to ignore. Fortunately, a better alternative makes both CFL and incandescent bulbs seem utterly irrelevant. The alternative is LED lighting, a known technology that is now applied to public and private lighting. It is ten times more efficient and it is not a threat to the environment or to you.

LED lighting is truly an upgrade.  Home owners and businesses alike can keep more of there hard earned money by simply changing from incandescent bulbs to energy efficient LED bulbs.  While the upfront cost of the LED lamps is substantially higher, the long term cost savings from the energy efficient LED lamps is more than worth the upgrade.

If you don’t have the budget to replace all your old incandescent lamps try replacing just the most heavily used ones.  Or lamps in hard to reach areas such as eves or above stairs.  Kitchens tend to be one of the areas in a home that have the lights on the longest.  And with most kitchens having recessed can lighting in them, kitchens are one of the easiest locations to upgrade to LED lighting.  There is a lot of quality LED lamps available on the market today.  With major companies such as Sylvania and Feit offering dimmable long lasting LED lamps.

Choosing the right LED lamps can be a complicated task if you don’t know what your looking for.  With LED lamp packaging displaying words like, lumens, wattage, and color spectrum, choosing the right lamps is overwhelming for some.

Wattage is how most people judge the amount of light they want for the particular fixture.  However, lumens is the true measurement of the amount of visible light LED lamp will give off.  A typical 60 watt incandescent lamps will give off around 520 lumens and last on average 2800 hours.  While a quality LED 12 watt lamp can give off around 800 lumens and last around 25,000 hours.  Some LED lamp manufactures have put on there packaging what wattage of incandescent lamp there LED lamp is designed to replace.  This helps to take some of the confusion out of choosing the right bulb.

The right color spectrum can make a huge difference in the way a room looks.  Color spectrum or as some people call it lamp temperature, is the color of the light the lamp gives off.  When LED lamps were first released they gave off a very cool or bluish color versus the more yellow or warm color of traditional incandescent lamps.  Now days LED lamp manufactures have a more perfected color that the lamps give off.  Often you will not be able to tell a difference between the color of an incandescent lamp and a quality warm white LED lamp.

You must also choose if you want to be able to dim your new LED lamp.  Dimmable LED lamps often cost more than non dimmable lamps, some as much as 40% more.  Dimmable led lamps give you the ability to choose how much lumens the lamp gives off via your wall mounted dimmer switch.  Dimming your LED lamps helps to reduce energy usage which saves you money on your power bill.  Using an approved dimmer for the LED lamp is a critical factor.  LED lamp manufactures and a list of approved dimmers for there product that can often be found in the directions or the manufactures website.

By now we all should know that switching from incandescent lamps to LED lamps can be a substantial savings.  But how much can you really save?  If you figured an average of 25 LED lamps per household and factored in average usage over 50,000 hours you would save around $6,700.00 in energy cost per home.  Add in the cost of time and maintenance to change the old incandescent lamps and the saving grows even bigger from there.

With businesses typically having more lights and increased hour usage switching to LED makes perfect sense.  With many power companies such as Mid American Energy offering rebates to help offset the cost of upgrading the LED.  A recent LED upgrade project we completed is Hoodz of Central Iowa.  The LED lighting helps reduce energy consumption, heat, and

maintenance cost. While they choose an ultra modern high efficient LED fixture for this project, often changing the existing lighting from commercial fluorescents to LED linear lamps can be an option as well.

Mid American Energy is even upgrading street lighting with LED.  They are starting to replace more than 100,000 Des Moines area street lights with new LED street lighting.  The project is excepted to take 10 years and save 35 to 50 percent in energy and reproduce carbon monoxide emissions by as much as 22,000 tons per year.   More on the LED street lighting upgrade can be found on KCCI’s post here.

Installing LED lighting from the initial construction phase of a business is now becoming more and more common.  A recent project Custom Electrical Services completed in West Des Moines Iowa for R2 Financial Strategies 2nd floor build out used all LED lighting throughout there new space.