Light painting:the most fun you can have in the dark

Synopsis-

In this post you will learn about an attractive and super easy technique called light painting. You will learn what light painting is, the basic techniques, and be given three example images with explanations of how i created them. You will need your camera with shutter speed adjustments and some kind of handheld lights.

Defining light painting-

Light painting allows you to basically draw or write with light in a photograph. According to Wikipedia, “Light painting, also known as light drawing or light graffiti is a photographic technique in which exposures are made usually at night or in a darkened room by moving a hand-held light source or by moving the camera. In many cases the light source itself does not have to appear in the image. The term light painting also encompasses images lit from outside the frame with hand-held light sources. The first known photographer to use this technique was Man Ray in his series "Space Writing".

Basics-

To light paint you open the shutter speed up to a long exposure anywhere from 10” to 30” works best. You can also use your camera’s bulb function which keeps the shutter open as long as you hold down the shutter button. You can change the aperture in order to reveal just the light source used or to reveal the background and other objects as well. Then you shine the light while the shutter is opened in one of two methods. The first method is to build the scene in the photograph by lighting the objects you want to show in the picture using the light reflected from the scene as your light source. The second is to draw or write with the light in which the light goes to the camera directly.

Example 1-

My first light painting example is an image I created for a valentines series. I used a thirty second exposure which allowed me to put light where I wanted it in the image. I used a lighter to trace the heart candies and create a design surrounding them. As you can see anywhere the intense light of the flame goes the light is recorded. Light painting is very similar to the looking at the sun analogy I used in my "Understanding shutter speed" post. Three factors control the brightness of the lights path in the image; the shutter speed, the amount of time the light is held in one place, and the intensity of the light itself. One area where you can notice the intensity factor is above the heart and in the bottom left of the image. The brightest light source in the image is the white hot specs of flint flinging through the air as the lighter was struck. The flint specs only emitted light for fractions of a second but they gave off a very intense glow. therefor the specs remain in the image in little lines that signify their trajectory. I then used a red L.E.D. light directed at the candies and shielded from the lens to give the warm, contrasting light on the hearts. This is also a great example of how you can build an image. What you light is what you see and how you light it is how you see it.

Example 2-

This example is much more simple. I set up the camera to capture the cityscape behind me and simply spelled my name. In order to do this you need to write backwards. The beauty of light painting with a digital camera is that you can experiment as much as you want and your mistakes sometimes become stylish flares for the image.

Example 3-

This last example is an image I created for a friends birthday. I attempted to write “happy”, two friends wrote “B” and “day”, and I gave her a light to write what she wanted which is the heart on the left. All this happened as my friend break danced in the foreground with light sticks taped to his shoes. The result is an image that included many people and represented a beautiful moment in time.