Light Painting 101

Yea new post! I decided to aim for posting every Friday or Saturday...hopefully. Coming up with new things each week is going to be a challenge so wish me luck :)

Light Painting definition via 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.

 

Light painting is fairly easy once you get the hang of how things work, but also fairly tricky once your ideas get bigger. An example of an "easier" one is shown above. Random but I love doing reflections in commercial photography and I thought it would look nice in this light painting shot as well.

My light source was of all things a Star Trek pen light. What I liked about this light source was the green color and the size of the beam. Size is important depending on what you are photographing. For something like an ipod nano I wanted a smaller beam. Something like a normal flash light would be too big and most likely just blow out (overexpose) the ipod. Think about the size of what you are photographing while hunting for a light source.

As far as what you can and can't use for light painting my motto is if it makes light use it. It is all about experimentation. I have use light sabers, flash lights and christmas lights to just name a few.
One very important thing to have, besides some sort of light source, is a tripod. You must! must! have one or have the inhuman capability of turning into a nonmoving rock while holding your camera. To do light painting properly you will be doing long exposures. For example the ipod photo was a 30 second exposure. Too long to hold the camera without ending up with blurry images.
To set up your shot the easiest way I found was to start with the lights on. Now this is easy to do in a studio setting or anywhere indoors that has a light switch. Not so much outside at night. If you are doing an outside shot I suggest you go to your location during the day to check things out. That way you are not stumbling around things you didn't know were there now that it is night time and dark out.
Now how to get those fun squiggly lines :) Basically all you need to do is to point your light at the camera. The hard part is getting the right exposure for your light. Too long of an exposure and your light gets blown out. Too short and your camera might not pick up any light at all. Also important is the speed that you move your light. The most trouble I have is in moving my light too fast so the camera doesn't have the chance to pick it up.
And the number most important thing is to have patience! Getting the right effect takes time and much experimentaion. My first couple of times took me around five hours before I was happy with the result. The second most important thing is to have fun! It is a really cool technique and you can do a lot with it!
Some of my results below :)

Thanks for reading!