Light Painting

The image to the left is one of my first attempts at light painting. The technique is rather simple. Find some stuff. Lay it out in a dark room. Set the camera to f/20 and 30 second exposure, and use a good flashlight to "paint" the exposure. With a little cleaning up in Lightroom and a gaussian filter in CS6 and voila, light painting!

As easy as the strategy was, it seems as though the tough part is the composition. For the image on the left it is obviously a southwest theme. However, I do not own a classic Colt .45 which was the gun that won the west. Instead I had to make due with an 1851 Colt Navy which is one of my favorite cap and ball revolvers. Given this slight change in the composition, I feel that the image changes from a southwestern theme to more of a pre-Civil War theme.