How to photograph a spirograph effect

Capturing light trails is often associated with shooting outdoors, when it’s dark and cold. So you’ll be pleased to hear that you can achieve similar effects in the comfort of your own home, no coat or gloves required!

However, we won’t be shooting conventional light trails, such as traffic trails, fairground rides or light paintings created by hand. In this project we’ll be capturing physiograms; geometric patterns created by photographing a long-exposure of a light source spinning in a regular pattern.

The results take on the look of a drawing from an old-school Spirograph toy. All this technique requires is a simple setup and a little long-exposure know-how.

To get started you need a dark room; if you’re shooting in the daytime you’ll need some heavy-duty curtains or an extra blanket to block out as much light as possible, as you’ll need to set a long shutter speed to capture the movement of the torch.

Rather than hand-holding the torch to create movement, we’re going to hang it from the ceiling with a piece of string and let motion and gravity do their work. Not only will this give us much cleaner light trails, the natural swinging pattern the torch carves out will give us the geometric appearance we’re after.

The great thing about this technique is you don’t need any specialist equipment, just your Canon DSLR, a tripod, shutter release and a torch. Once we’ve captured a variety of images, we’ll show you how to add colour to create a work of modern art.

01 Secure the torch
Hang your torch from the ceiling so that the light is pointing downwards, towards the floor, using some string that’s roughly a metre in length and a drawing pin to hold it in place. Make sure the pin is secure and the torch can move freely.

02 Make a tail
As the torch swings it will make its own spirals but to ensure that the larger swings create smooth arcs you’ll need to attach a ‘tail’ to the side of the torch. To make one cut a rectangle roughly 10cm long from some card or paper.

03 Position camera
Position the camera with the lens facing directly up on a tripod and place it directly beneath the hanging torch. Get the tripod down as low as possible but leave enough room to use the viewfinder or Live View to focus and compose image.

04 Compose and focus
Using Live View or the viewfinder focus manually on the torch and then do a test swing to ensure it stays within the frame. If it’s swinging out and the tripod is as low as it can go and your lens is at its widest focal length, shorten the string a little.

05 Set aperture
Switch to Bulb mode. The distance between the torch and the camera will change as the torch swings, so select a narrow aperture (f/16-22) to keep the light trail in focus for the duration. Not only will this give a great depth of field, it will reduce any ambient light.

06 Shutter speed
Attach a shutter release. Swing the torch and hold down the shutter to start a 30-40 sec test shot and release to finish it. If the image is too dark, increase ISO or aperture (or both). If it’s too light, reduce the ISO or aperture and experiment with exposure times.

Final tip: Bulb mode
This shooting mode is essential for long-exposure photography. It enables you to set the aperture and then control the length of time the shutter is open for. If you don’t have a dedicated Bulb mode on your camera’s main shooting Mode dial, you’ll need to switch to Manual mode and scroll beyond the longest shutter speed (usually 30 seconds), and the display will change to ‘Bulb’, as this is the option for exposures longer than half a minute.

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