It’s football season, which means every Saturday and Sunday, your home’s TV becomes an essential gathering point in your home. Sadly, in the Washington, DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia area, autumn is also thunderstorm season. So how can you protect your expensive TV from electrical surges and storms? The electrical experts at Kolb Electric have the answer.

Electrical surges—whether from lightning strikes or otherwise—are easy to prepare for with proper equipment. And if you’ve spent four figures on a television, it might just be worth the investment! You can protect your TV from a power surge in two ways: by installing a dedicated circuit and/or installing a whole-home surge protector.

Your dedicated circuit for your TV will make sure that your TV isn’t having its power leached from other electronics in your home, making its sound and picture clearer, while the whole-home surge protector will protect your TV from lightning strikes and power surges.

Effectively defending your home from power surges requires a two-step approach: first, outfitting it with a whole-home surge protector, then using surge-protected outlets and power strips indoors. Both types of surge protectors act essentially like pressure relief valves, diverting excess energy away and restoring normal operation once levels regulate.

Whole-home surge protectors are usually wired to a service panel and are designed to stop surges of at least 40,000 amps, though larger ones can be installed. Pairing them with individual plug-in surge protectors should do a good job of catching any potentially damaging energy that may get into your home.

Like many safety-related things, whole-home surge protectors are appliances you buy and hope to never actually use. But all it takes is a single downed line or big lightning strike to cause thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to your home—not worth the risk!

When it comes to step lights, there are several light sources to consider. infographic you can use to brush up your light bulb identification and selection skills. If you want to see how LED compares to other common light sources, use the infographic as you choose your step lights. Knowing what light source you prefer will make your decision easier.

2. Type of Installation

For the photo shown to the right, taken at night in a Texas ghost town, Danser assembled the following items: a powerful, handheld LED light; his Canon 5D Mark iii camera and Canon 16-35 mm L lens (at 16mm); Canon 580ex 2 flash; a red gel (piece of red cellophane to color the light of the flash); a tripod; and his girlfriend’s finger (to graciously hold down the shutter release button because he forgot his bulb release at home!).

Danser told Pegasus: “So, I set my camera on bulb mode and had my girlfriend hold down the shutter release button for 13 minutes, while the camera was very sturdy on the tripod. The place was pitch black except for the stars and the moon (very little ambient light pollution in the desert). As my girlfriend was keeping the shutter open, I walked to one side of the structure and methodically shined my flashlight (rated at 2000 lumens, so it’s pretty bright) all along the exterior and front facade of the building. This lasted for about five minutes before I turned the flashlight off and ran to the other side of the building and ‘painted’ for another five minutes.”

Danser said that one of the important tricks of light painting is to show off the textures of the buildings by shining his LED flashlight at an angle instead of from the camera position.

After “painting” the sides of the building for five minutes each, he ran inside and popped off about 10 red-gelled flashes to create the effect of a warm glow pouring out of the building.

When asked how he was able to run in and out of the building without showing up in the photo, Danser simply replied that “The camera could not ‘see’ me because I was moving quickly, and there wasn’t enough ambient light to expose me in the picture.” While popping off the gelled flashes in the building, he always made sure he was not visible to the camera.

After 13 minutes at an aperture of 2.8, Danser was able to get an excellent exposure of the night sky while having ample time to do all of the “light painting” that he had planned beforehand.

Soon I hope to try some light painting of my own with less expensive equipment to show you how anyone can adopt Danser’s technique. After all, light can be used in all kinds of art and photography projects.

In the meantime, check out this Danser’s website to see tons of beautiful experiments playing with—and painting with—light. Thanks, Matt!