Justin Kosman Photography

Lights, camera, rail

LED light trails

While shooting a Vans Roadtrip this spring, I saw a kid in Tempe running around with these LED lights on his fingers and got the idea to put them on a BMX bike for a bulb exposure experiment.
I finally found a place that sold them up in Big Bear while I was getting a prop carved for another shoot and despite being over-priced and under-engineered, I had to clean out their inventory.

I called up Kink/Shadow/Lotek rider Albert Mercado and told him my idea and he was ready with a location the next night at midnight.
Any easy 4-stair rail was a prefect place to test out the power of these little lights. Half the stock failed within 5 mins, but we were able to get enough power out of them to expose a nice trail through Albert’s run-up, pop the flashes on the rail and a nice trail through his landing.
Canon 5D MK2 on Manfrotto tripod, 15mm fisheye lens, ISO 320, f/8, 3-second bulb exposure. 1 Q-Flash, 2 x Vivitar 285s.
Next week I’ll be teaching this shot at Woodward East Digital Media Camp, so if you are signed up, bring a tripod! 

PS- Thanks to Defgrip for the feature interview.  It turned out great guys!