How To: Fitness Photographer Bee Trofort Captures Movement and Colour with KYU-6 LED Light Wraps

Combining strobes and continuous light for stunning sports portraits.

Light painting can get really get your creativity flowing, and it’s gets even more interesting when you combine it with regular flash to create dynamic and interesting images.

Client and Fitness Instructor, Justice Anderson, wanted to showcase the power of his personal training work. In this recent long exposure fitness shoot, photographer Bee Trofort worked in the dark with strip lights and added light painting to accentuate movement in a still photograph. To enhance the movement, Trofort added Spekular KYU-6 RGB Light Wraps to Anderson’s wrists and ankles. With the long exposure, she was able to capture beautiful streaking movement of Anderson’s workout in a variety of shots. View this video to see how she captures the physicality and form of this professional trainer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wfN2iEpJio

Bee uses a combination of strobes and KYU-6 RGB wrap lights to get two exposures in one go. The first is the “regular” strobe exposure, a standard three-point setup with a key and rim light. The strobes control this exposure by popping them in a dark room. A “second” exposure is the long exposure that leaves the shutter open for a longer duration, capturing the light painting from the KYU-6 RGB lights. Bee attached the KYU-6 bracelets to her subject, which was set in different colours for different effects. They’re so easy to use, have a variety of colours and effects, and you can control the brightness as well.

It’s also important to set your camera up on a tripod for maximum stability because you will be combining two exposures, and you don’t want the camera to move between the two frames.

To achieve the shots, you need to set your strobe time to freeze and your shutter speed to light paint. This sounds complicated, but Bee affirms: “in reality, all it means is that you need to place your strobes to compose a shot and (if you can) set your camera to rear-curtain sync. That strobe will freeze the action and give you a sharp, clear image of your model.

Now, set the shutter to anything between three and ten seconds. You will have this long to play with the LEDs until the strobes pop, and your subject is frozen. Feel free to experiment with the exposure duration. In terms of aperture, there are no set rules for light painting. Remember, you can control the light brightness in two ways: by changing the aperture or by changing the brightness of the KYU-6 lights. Depending on your tests, feel free to change either.”

Ultimately it will take some trial and error to get your settings right for what your subject is doing, but that’s all part of the fun, especially with light painting.

Let’s take a look at some more results!