’80s -style portraits

Jason Parnell-brookes recreates the decadent neon look of the ’80s in this project using torches and hollow acrylic rods

Create a retro-look portrait with torches and clever editing

Light painting is a great way to get into long‑exposure photography and offers up a world where we can control light and shape it to suit our needs. Most of the time we use a powerful torch in low light or at night to visually paint a scene, with results often fantastical. However, in this project we’re going to 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 so we’re using this to our advantage to mimic a style reminiscent of 1980s film posters. Think of films like Tron and The Terminator where the sleek, neon colours are simultaneously retro and contemporary in appearance. With new 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 ’80s…

So, with our model kitted out like he’s from Miami Vice, and a soft‑top car, we’re going to use the light wand to create these ace effects in‑camera, and then polish off the colours in Photoshop later on.

To get this looking good will take a lot of practice – it took nearly three hours longer than anticipated to do this shoot because once we got the technique nailed (after about an hour) it was too much fun to stop! So with that let’s jump in…