Twinkle Twinkle Little Hearts

I’ve always been wondering how the lights in the shape of hearts (see my header) can be achieved when I saw pictures in the Flickr or in someone else’s photoblogs. I just love the effect.

And one fine day, my dear colleague happened to link me to a blog (I can’t remember the address) and I went “OMG!! That’s what I’ve always wanted to do!! Thanks so much for the link!! Love you love you love you!!”. Lol….lol….. I was simply thrilled when she sent me the link and when I got home that very evening, I went into action, duplicating the technique so I could capture those images I’ve been drooling at for ages.

Some girls asked me how did I do it and so I decided to make a short tutorial and share what I’ve learned. Please remember that this tutorial is based on what I did and I hope it works best for you too. Anyway, it’s a very simple technique and I’m sure you’ll be able to follow suit.

Step 1

Cut out a strip of black cardstock, with the width about 80% of the length of your lens like below (I’m using a 50mm lens)

Step 2

Encircle the paper around the lens and secure it with tape or glue. I used cellophane tape to secure the paper.

Step 3

Draw a circle with a diameter that will fit the tube-shaped paper. The best thing to do is to remove the paper tube, trace it on another black cardstock to get the exact circle size. Cut out the circle. Thereafter, draw a small heart shape in the center of the circle paper and cut it with a exacto knife. I hand drawn the heart or if you have a small heart shape punch, you can use it too.

Step 4

Adhere the the circle paper onto the tube-shaped paper with cellophane tape or any glue. Just make sure you secure it properly without any gap. It will look like what I did here (it doesn’t look presentable at all but it’s secure and works really well for me)

Step 5

Before you start taking pictures, make sure you set your lens to manual focus (MF) like shown below

Step 6

Insert the completed tube-shaped paper into your lens like this

Before you start taking pictures, find a place with lots of light source for example on the street, where there are cars with head lamps and street lights. Look through your viewfinder, manually turn the focus ring on your lens and throw the image off-focus (blur effect). Then you will be able to see the lights in heart shapes and start snapping away!

It’s as easy as I’ve mentioned earlier. So, try it yourself and have fun with this technique!

Here are a couple of shots I took the last 2 days my heart shape lens ‘cap’.

I love this one!! Taken on ECP highway towards the Flyer.

 Have a great evening!