# Source: https://learn.adafruit.com/light-painting-with-raspberry-pi.md

# Light Painting with Raspberry Pi

## Overview

_Light painting_ is an artistic photographic technique combining long exposure times with lights in motion. Traditionally these images have been hand-painted with a penlight…but more recently, affordable microcontrollers and addressable RGB LEDs have brought a new high-tech twist to the idea.  
  
A few such projects have been featured on tech blogs, most notably [the](https://sites.google.com/site/mechatronicsguy/lightscythe)_[LightScythe](https://sites.google.com/site/mechatronicsguy/lightscythe)_[by Gavin “The Mechatronics Guy,”](https://sites.google.com/site/mechatronicsguy/lightscythe) which uses an Arduino and a two meter bar of LEDs. The resulting photos, with their intense colors and mid-air suspended images, have been super popular, and rightfully so.  
![](https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/assets/000/001/619/medium800/raspberry_pi_lightscythe.jpg?1396774414)

Large, colorful images require a&nbsp;<u>lot</u>&nbsp;of memory…and that’s one area where we'll need more memory than an&nbsp;Arduino can provide. We had a hunch that the Raspberry Pi could make this process easier. But even we weren’t prepared for what a cakewalk this would be…

![](https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/assets/000/001/620/medium800/raspberry_pi_ID859top_LRG.jpg?1396774421)

- [Next Page](https://learn.adafruit.com/light-painting-with-raspberry-pi/hardware.md)

## Featured Products

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