Light Painting

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light painting is a very interesting lighting technique and makes for some interesting photography lessons.

Waving a torch around, pointed towards the lens in a dark room. Can be great fun but to write your name or draw a horse is not light painting, I suppose you might call it light drawing.

To paint with light mount the camera on a tripod in complete darkness, open the shutter and then ‘paint’ light onto the surface of a subject using a torch.  Have a selection of different sized torches and, so that the camera receives only reflected light from the subject, tape black card around the bulb to protect any unwanted light shining back to the lens.  Filters of different colours and cut out shapes can be used to achieve particular effects.  You should prepare a selection ready for use.

 

 

The length of time that you shine the light on each part of the subject and the time to cover the whole can only be established by experimentation. It’s surprising how well a good guess can work and your modified second attempt can be very successful.  The brightness of your light source and the lens aperture determine the overall time. A long exposure is very forgiving in light painting as it gives you more flexibility and latitude for errors. Five to ten minutes is usually comfortable. Remember that increasing the lens f-number setting by one stop, doubles the exposure.  Use a small torch to concentrate the light in a small area, moving the torch away from the subject achieves a weaker and larger area of illumination.  Practice is fun.

This simple piece of rope was neatly curled on a white sheet of paper.  With the camera locked on a tripod above the cable in total darkness, the aperture was set to give about five minutes exposure. With the shutter open a small torch outlined the cable. The torch followed one side of the cable about four inches away then at the end returned along the same path on the other side. To achieve a smooth result several passes were made in both directions. At the end of the exposure the end of the cable was painted to create a lit effect.

The old style camera shot was taken using exactly the same lighting technique, except that an assistant placing a black nylon-stocking frame between the light and the subject, when it was needed, diffused parts of the image, another usefull tool when light painting. As a matter of interest the print under the camera was taken from a 10x8 inch Polaroid exposure test it was transferred to art paper by soaking the paper for ten minutes in warm water then laying the Polaroid on to the paper and using a roller to transfer the image.

Don't worry about your hand moving about in frame it won't be seen as long as the torchlight has been completely blacked out however wearing a black shirt and gloves reduces the risks.  It all takes practice but that's what makes it fun.

 

Before light painting, the fruit in this picture was exposed darker than normal with an overhead light, by closing the aperture by 2 stops.  The same film was then re-exposed in darkness with light painting, individual fruits being lit with the moving light source.  The result produced no hard shadows but the vibrant colours only found with direct light.  A computer with a photo-editing program can be used by loading a painted image, followed by a second normally exposed image. Do not move the camera between the two exposures. By using the program’s layering feature the two images can be separately adjusted and combined to produce a very creative result.

The Albert Hall was once light painted by turning off all the lighting, then with an f22 aperture, opening the shutter and lighting each individual seat while moving with a spot light from row to row. It was important to keep moving, making sure the light never shone directly at the lens. The shutter was then closed, the theatre house lights switched on and the film re-exposed to capture the rest of the theatre. The resulting image is stunning but unfortunatly not mine and so I am not able to add it to this site.

Tip
Don’t be over ambitious when starting this lighting technique, Choose something simple, a textured subject like an orange on a dark background is ideal.

Happy light painting.

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