This light painting workshop is only held once a year and fills up quickly. The schedules are posted on thePresidentsHeads.com website. If you visit during one of the open weekends, you can learn the history of these heads and why they were moved to this industrial recycling facility.

Several techniques and methods of lighting the scene were demonstrated. Each technique provided different options in how you can light a scene at night. Photos were taken with steel wool to spin sparks behind the statue, flashlights with colored gels, and a drone with a spotlight to light the scene from above.

The majority of the photos were taken with a long exposure (10 seconds up to several minutes.) There is a level of experimentation required to determine what the correct exposure time and iso is needed for each shot. The amount of time required to paint the subjects will also determine how long of an exposure you need. If it takes a couple of minutes to paint the subject, then you will need an exposure time greater than that. A shutter release and Bulb mode on the camera a great way to achieve these long exposures. My shutter release was not working correctly so I was limited the maximum exposure time of 30 seconds. I was able to take multiple 30 second exposures for some of these longer shots and merged the multiple images using the Lightroom photo merge tool.

Here is a video example of how the steel wool was spun to provide sparks behind a statue. A second person would paint light on the statues to complete the the photo.

The next technique is the use of flashlights and colored gels. You paint the light on the structure to get a photo with the multiple colors shown below. The amount of time required to paint the light depends on the color. The red and blue lights require more time to paint the subject compared to the white or yellow lights. I believe we had 3 different people painting these colors for this shot.

Colored light tubes were also used to give a unique look to the photos.

Finally a drone with a spotlight was used to get some great images of the heads with the light from above. The light from the drone spotlight was not as bright as the flashlights, so it required longer exposure times. While the sparks and flashlight painting was fun, I think I like the look of these top lighted images the best from the workshop.