Over the last couple of years I have been running the odd evening for my local Scout Explorers group – the 1st Witley Cassiopeians. This has included playing conkers, werewolf, improv, and now LightTAG.

On Thursday 12th January my friend Kathryn Harkup came with Radu and Tom to run a LightTAG session. In essence, LightTAG is painting on cameras. Using LED’s as a paintbrush, with an open shutter in a dark room, you can create stunning paintings in no time at all.

After 1.5 hours, the Scout leader declared that she had never seen them so engaged in an activity before.

At first they were incredibly tentative. They planned and thought things through. Slowly they realised that the most effective approach was to just do as much experimenting as you could. Throw yourself in. See what worked. Do it again and again to see what happens and evolve by mistakes, trial and error, and through the contributions of others.

By the end of the session there was a constant whirl of activity. Sometimes it would be one person trying something out solo. Sometimes it would involve 5 or 6 of the Explorer Scouts working together. One of the boys who collected as many LEDs as he could get his hands on and threw them the length of the gymnasium. Unfortunately I don’t have the image for that particular shot. However, all the other boys took the opportunity, unprompted and uncoordinated, to also photograph the event from different angles along the length of the hall. This is one of them:

Creative Opportunity

As you can imagine, I couldn’t let the opportunity slip to get involved. It was just too much fun. In my first effort I didn’t know what to do. So I just swung my arms about wildly creating swirls.

First Effort

The immediate feedback from the camera was great, I saw that I hadn’t been bold enough in my swinging. So I made more arcs and for longer. Leading to a couple of shots like this:

Getting Bolder

The composition lacked something. I tried lateral movement, and variations on a theme of circles. Finally I ran towards the camera and back again, swinging my arms around, and also adding in the blue…

Introducing Movement

Finally I started making more interesting colour choices and to control how they were employed to create something that I am, in my own way, quite proud of…

Pride (Before The Fall?)

This was the result of some 7 or 8 experiments.

The process was weirdly liberating. I am sure that we must have all looked like loons, waving our arms about, running backwards and forwards, jumping, sitting, and throwing the LEDs. But nobody could see you in the dark. So nobody cared. We began to come out of our shells creating a hugely eclectic and impressive body of work in an amazingly short space of time.

I was also impressed by how easily the boys (and the there girls who are part of the group as there isn’t a nearby Guides group) self-organised and the social barriers dropped.

I can’t wait to do it again. In fact, I took some LEDs home with me. If I can find a camera that I can control the shutter on – maybe I’ll play with my boys tomorrow!

Thank you to the 1st Witley Cassiopeians. Please take a bow:

1st Witley Cassiopeians