Light Painting and the Story of a Guitar

The images above are” light painted” time exposures of a corner of my room.  The light painting is done by doing a time exposure in a dark room, and using a L.E.D. flashlight to illuminate areas selectively. In this case I took four different variations of the light painting and combined them in a Flash movie so that they fade between each exposure.  Since the camera was left on a tripod, the images fade between each other smoothly. The rather “blueish” tone is due to the color of the L.E.D.  The red streaks were from a red bike light.

    That’s a Fender Mustang electric guitar that I bought several eons ago. The Mustang was a model that didn’t really sell well when it first came out, but developed a following years after.  It was a “short scale” neck, which makes “note bending” (pulling the pitch up of a note by pulling or pushing with the left hand) easier.

    I was playing this guitar on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in a bar with the band “Fat Shadow,” (not the same band as the current Fat Shadow) when I dislocated my shoulder. I had a chronic problem with the shoulder, and generally I had to go to the hospital to get it back to where it was supposed to be. The guitar skittered, face down, across the stage, making an indescribable noise. The audience got out of its seats and was shouting encouragement, presumably thinking this was part of the act. I went out to the car to get driven to the hospital.  The shoulder popped back into joint when I sat down in the car, and I finished the night with the band.

Related articles

• One-on-One Light Painting Workshop - Marc Forand (haroldrossfineart.wordpress.com)