SHOOT AN '80S PORTRAIT

Photography week

September 12, 2024

Jason Parnell-Brookes recreates the neon look of the 1980s using torches and hollow acrylic rods

Light painting is a great way to get into long‑exposure photography, and it enables us to shape light in all kinds of creative ways. Most of the time we’ll use a powerful torch in low light or at night to visually paint a scene, and the results can be spectacular. However, for this project we’re going to take a different approach, and place gelled torches in hollow plastic rods covered in translucent paper to create a light wand that features heavily in the creation of the final image.

The torch we’re using also has a stroboscopic effect built in, and we’re using this to mimic a style reminiscent of 1980s film posters. Think of films like Tron and The Terminator, in which the lurid neon colours are simultaneously retro and contemporary in appearance. With more recent films like Super 8 and TV shows like Stranger Things harking back to this style, this period hasn’t been as popular since, well, the 1980s. So, with our model kitted out like an extra from Miami Vice, and a suitable stylish soft‑top car, we’re going to use the light wand to create these ace effects in‑camera.

Achieving the desired effect takes a bit of practice, but once you’ve nailed the basics of the technique you’ll be hooked – our shoot lasted three hours longer than we’d planned, because once we got our images looking the way we wanted we were having too much fun to stop!

1 RAW MATERIALS

We're using two Shadowhawk Tactical X800 Flashlights that we purchased on Amazon, which have adjustable power and strobe settings; we've taped pink and blue plastic over the ends. We also bought a couple of hollow acrylic tubes from eBay and tucked the torches inside them.