United by Light: 9 Years of Light Painting Friendship & Collaboration

Dec 16, 2025

(Phoenix & Triceratops - 2025)

Above is a very special collaboration between myself and Chinese light artist Roy Wang.

I met up with Roy in Santa Monica late Thanksgiving night. He had flown into LA from NYC that day, and had two days working in Los Angeles before heading back to Beijing.

The image above reminds me of the last time I collaborated with him, 9 years prior, above Los Angeles on an empty road atop Mount Wilson (see below image).

(Chinese Dragon & Spinosaurus - 2016)

I first met Roy Wang during a trip in 2016 when we did a photo exhibition along with a group of fellow light painting photographers, across the globe together, in Jianxi, China. Afterwards, we spent a few nights in Shanghai before going back to our respective homelands.

(Shanghai - 2016)

One of the wild things I learned along this journey with other light painting photographers was that light painting styles do not always mix easily - sometimes the styles were like oil and water! It took a lot of coordination and consensus to achieve something natural and harmonious looking.

We had to align not only our languages (Russian, German, Spanish, French, English & Chinese), but also communicate complex ideas and techniques, with specific exposure times across diverse environments that were subject to a Typhoon (along with a side of jet lag and general lack of sleep overall).

In the years following, Roy and I kept in touch and he eventually made a trip to visit me in Los Angeles where we did some collaborative work atop Mount Wilson, and took a roadtrip to some unique desert landscapes in Utah along with our Spanish light painting friend Frodo (pictured below arrival at LAX in 2016).

In the world of Light Painting Photography, freehand illustration is a rare skill to possess, and it is only obtained through practice and willful intent over years. For two well known photographers to get together and create in the same frame, for a moment, is an even more rare event.

Our cultural backgrounds and stylistic choices are different, but our creative spirit is very similar.

In the image below captured in 2016, we wanted to write out our home town names side by side even though they exist on opposite sides of the world:

(LA & Beijing - 2016)

Fast forward 9 years, and we had a short 1.5 hr window of opportunity to meet up again in Los Angeles on Thanksgiving night.

Here are the results on a Santa Monica beach during low tide. It was an electric session and I was so happy to create again with a fellow freehand light painting artist.

For the first 2 images, I wanted to reach back into the history of Southern California Surf Culture and have the light paintings pay homage to the overall seaside vibe:

(Santa Monica Surf Club - 2025)

(Soul Surfers - 2025)

After a few images, we took a less side by side and more altogether route. I did the octopus in the center (below) and Roy did all the ocean elements surrounding it.

(Octopus Scene - 2025)

After the octopus, we decided to take our cameras into the danger zone of the low tide, using the watery reflections to complete the mirror side of our butterfly light paintings. Roy's creation is on the left (orange / red) and mine is on the right (blue / pink).