Frodo Alvarez DKL
Alfredo Álvarez Alonso, known artistically as Frodo Álvarez DKL, is a Spanish Light Painting artist and founder of the Children of Darklight collective, with over 17 years devoted to exploring light as a transformative and human-centered art form. Based between Madrid and his homeland of Asturias, he creates expressive Light Painting portraits, massive and immersive event experiences, and powerful works in natural landscapes and historic spaces where light gives new life to forgotten environments. Frodo’s creations feel alive, emotional, and deeply shared. His belief in Light Painting as energy, connection, and positive human experience beautifully reflects the spirit of using light to inspire, uplift, and bring people together. Check out his images and full Light Painting Brushes Artist interview below!
What is your name?
My full name is Alfredo Álvarez Alonso, also known as Frodo Álvarez DKL or simply Frodo or Frodo DKL. I was born in Oviedo (Asturias, Spain) and I am currently living in Madrid.
I am a Light Painting artist and the founder of the Children of Darklight collective. I also lead DKL Light Experience, an agency focused on immersive Light Painting experiences, Photocall LightPainting as my main service and a key project in my professional growth, and DKL Pro LightPainting, my tools brand through which I develop creations such as the Scanner DKL.
How long have you been light painting?
I have been actively working with Light Painting for over 17 years. I started experimenting in 2008, almost by accident, with some friends, and by 2009 I had already become a true light junkie. I began creating Light Painting experiences for events in 2010, and I have been working professionally and full-time on Light Painting projects, workshops, and large-scale artistic experiences since 2015.
What is your favorite part about the Light Painting Art Form?
Light Painting — and light itself in the darkness — has something truly magical about it. It carries an energy, a power that pulls you in.
When we take the camera and start painting with light alone in the dark, we enter a new dimension. We allow our imagination to flow, inspiration begins to appear, and we let ourselves be carried by it.
Light Painting captured me from the very moment I discovered it. Its potential as a creative tool is immense: the ability to transform forgotten or destroyed spaces, to intervene in incredible landscapes, and to re-imagine places through light.
It also has extraordinary qualities when shared with others. It can be enjoyed collectively, used as a form of personal therapy, or experienced as a healing and connecting process with other people.
In my case, I also see the enormous — and still largely unexplored — potential of Light Painting within the world of events, as immersive and emotional experiences.
Light Painting is not just one beautiful thing. It brings many things into my life: the way I understand the world, the people I meet, the journeys I take, and the memories and visions I carry with me. Light Painting is a very powerful art form that fills us with positive energy, because we are li
What are your favorite type of light paintings to create and why?
From the very beginning, I felt a strong curiosity about Light Painting and experimented with as many styles and techniques as I could access. That wide exploration gave me a high level of experience, which I now apply not only to my personal artworks, but also to the experiences I design for different types of events.
When it comes to what I enjoy the most, I naturally think of Light Painting portraits, whether with models or friends, and special adventures where we travel to powerful locations with the intention of creating surprising and visually striking results.
At the same time, I deeply enjoy every event where I can share my Light Painting, my light, my energy, and my passion with people through immersive or participatory experiences, both in public and corporate contexts. I love giving 200% of myself and receiving that emotional feedback in return — the surprise, the joy, the excitement, seeing people’s eyes light up and watching them leave happy, amazed, and fulfilled.
I also truly enjoy camera rotation photography. When I first started working with camera rotations, it felt like discovering the magic of light and Light Painting all over again. Through rotation, light becomes movement, creating surprising mandala-like forms, always different from one another, and allowing me to combine multiple techniques within a single image.
I often merge camera rotation photography with portraits, creating what I personally named “rotratos”, or “rotraits” in English — a fusion of rotation, portrait, and Light Painting that opens new creative possibilities.
Perhaps these are the ways I enjoy Light Painting the most: either alone in my homeland, immersed in a beautiful landscape; during creative sessions with friends; or through participatory experiences where Light Painting becomes something shared, alive, and deeply human.
What is your favorite environment to shoot in?
Light Painting can be created almost anywhere, as long as the environment is dark or in low light conditions. However, the spaces I enjoy the most are beautiful natural landscapes such as forests, beaches, rivers, mountains, as well as historic ruins, industrial ruins, and caves, which hold an incredible and often unexplored potential for Light Painting.
When working in abandoned or forgotten places, I see Light Painting as a way of bringing new life to those spaces, temporarily transforming them through light and giving them a new meaning.
That said, I also truly enjoy working indoors — in a studio or controlled space where I can have absolute calm, darkness, and time to create comfortably, either alone or with models.
My homeland, Asturias, is also a true paradise for Light Painting, offering a unique combination of landscapes, atmosphere, and locations that constantly inspire me.
What is your favorite image you have created with the Light Painting Brushes?
One of my favorite Light Painting Brushes tools is the glitter stick. Very recently, using that tube along with other LPB tools, I created a highly spectacular live Light Painting portrait during a Spanish late-night TV show, El Hormiguero, broadcast in prime time.
The portrait was made live for a well-known Spanish celebrity, Cristina Pedroche. The light trails created with the glitter tube became the final touch that completed the image, adding movement, texture, and a strong visual impact to the portrait.
Because of the context, the live performance, and the visibility it had, that image has already become one of the most special Light Paintings I have created, even though it is very recent.
In my work, I also frequently use different types of fiber optics and plexiglass tools, which allow me to explore light textures, layers, and painterly effects in a very expressive way.
What is your favorite Light Painting Brushes attachment?
Without a doubt, my favorite Light Painting Brushes accessory is the universal connector. For me, it is the most powerful tool because it allows you to connect any flashlight with any attachment — whether it comes from the Light Painting Brushes store or something we build ourselves.
That freedom is essential to my creative process. It allows experimentation, improvisation, and the use of everyday objects — even something as simple as a plastic bottle or any custom-made element — turning them into Light Painting tools.
In addition to that, I really enjoy working with plexiglass attachments, fiber optics, and tubes, as they offer a wide range of textures, shapes, and expressive possibilities when painting with light.
What or who inspires you and your light painting work?
When it comes to what inspires my Light Painting, very often it is the person I am portraying, if I am creating a Light Painting portrait, or the location itself, when I am working outdoors.
During Light Painting sessions — especially in exterior locations — I believe there are two main ways of working. One is arriving with a clear, pre-planned idea: a specific concept or style you want to develop in that place. The other is arriving at a location without knowing it beforehand and allowing yourself to be inspired directly by the space. In that case, ideas appear naturally, you visualize them, and then you try to bring them to life through light.
This second approach is one I practice very often and deeply enjoy, because I believe it greatly enriches creative agility and intuition. That said, I also value planning sessions, which I do frequently. The positive side of planning is that it allows you to be more ambitious and to develop more complex ideas, while improvisation often leads you to safer, more instinctive decisions. Both approaches complement each other.
When speaking about people who inspire me, I must mention my friend and multi-disciplinary artist Sfhir, with whom I have been collaborating regularly since 2014 on very relevant projects. I have witnessed his growth as an artist, I attend his exhibitions, and I constantly learn from his work.
In terms of Light Painting influences, many of the artists who shaped my trajectory emerged from the Light Junkies community on Flickr. Artists such as Dana Maltby, Darius Twin, Hannu Huhtamo, JannePaint, Tim Gamble, Hugo Baptista, Denis Smith, Aurora Crowley, Patrick Rochon, Eric Paré, as well as artists like Mass and Cisco Lightpainting, have been a strong source of inspiration throughout my journey.
I am also deeply inspired by several Spanish Light Painting artists, including Xandra Lunar, El Niño de las Luces, Iris Shyroii, and Carles Calero, whose work, collaborations, and shared experiences have also played an important role in my artistic development.
What is one piece of advice for someone who is just starting out Light Painting?
Forget the camera for a moment and focus on the light itself.
Learn how light moves, how your body moves, and how intention changes the result. Light Painting is not about equipment — it is about curiosity, experimentation, and developing your own visual language.
I believe the most important thing to understand is that, especially at the beginning, Light Painting is something you do for yourself. The first step is to discover the fascinating world of light: how light works, how cameras capture it, how light trails can be modified, textured, and shaped.
Learn from your mistakes. Practice a lot without the need to show everything to others. Get to know the tools you are working with, and once you understand their effects, start building your own tools. Practice, experiment, and create effects you feel comfortable with. Work with characters, shapes, combinations, colors — all of that becomes the backpack of experience you will carry with you in the future.
Another important piece of advice is to draw inspiration from the work of others. Try to understand how they create certain textures, movements, or styles — not to copy them blindly, but to learn the techniques behind them and later apply that knowledge to your own projects.
Do not imitate just for the sake of imitation, and do not chase likes. Social media should be the last step, not the first. Today, many people are overly focused on likes and recognition, and all of that is often unreal, misleading, and harmful. It can easily generate ego issues and unnecessary rivalries.
Enjoy the light. Believe in yourself. Create darkness and see where the light you carry inside takes you. And then, share it with others. Create wherever you feel called to create, find your own style and your own work — and let others copy you, if they want to and if they can.
Where can people see more of your light painting work?
Website:
