The students in the BHS digital photography class went out late at night recently to learn about “Night Writing,” a technique that can be done with the night setting on a digital camera. If there is movement where the photo is being taken, it creates a line of bright light that can be used to create drawings on the photo.

“It’s really cool,” junior Selena Bonnell says. “It was fun using the flashlights. We did a photo using steel wool and a whisk and it made some cool and unexpected things on it.”

Although it was fun, learning about night writing came with its challenges as well.

“It was night time, so it was really dark and it was hard to know where to focus the camera,” Bonnell said. “The wind was really strong and it messed with the surroundings.”

Teacher Christy Carlisle got the idea to take students out to learn about this technique.

“Night writing is the new photo thing to do,” Carlisle said. “There is a website called photoextremist.com that was created by a high school student who started the company the year after he graduated. We saw the steel wool technique on his website and decided to try it.”

Carlisle feels that it is important to learn  and grow from other artists.

“Just like any art, artists always expand on what’s come before them,” Carlisle said. “If artists didn’t do that, we would still be doing the same things we did 3,000 years ago.”