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Light painting – Episode #28 Tuesday

Light painting is a really fun way to play around with photography. The concept is relatively simple, use a long shutter speed in an environment with little light. During your long exposure, “paint” light on anything you want to. This can be done with a flashlight, a cell phone, a strobe, car headlights, just about anything that produces light. People have used this technique to light things from the front, back and even spell out names in the dark. In this episode of Phlearn we talk about some of the basics, and go over calculating exposure to give yourself more time to paint with light. For our final exposure we used a 60 second exposure, ISO 200, f/5.6. We used pocketwizards to hit the shutter in Bulb Mode, and timed ourselves with an iPhone. We used a Manfrotto 055XPROB Tripod to get the camera low to the ground.

Be sure to share your light painting photos below!

light painting Phlearn

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  • http://www.facebook.com/sophierybalov Sophie Rybalov

    awesome!

  • http://www.facebook.com/daveprincedesign Dave Prince

    This picture is sick! Nice job once again you guys. Also, I’m glad you didn’t get hit by a car. :-D

  • Anonymous

    haha, thanks Dave, we are also glad :)

  • guest

    Avery doesnt look as energetic as usual.. you must have dragged her out pretty late :-) so for the end shot you took another one properly exposed then masked it in to hide the strobe?

  • Parthiv

    I have tried taking these type of pics, but it always makes my images grainy. I have tried using lightroom and photoimpact to reduce noise, but it doesn’t reduce it completely. Maybe you guys can talk about how to get rid of noise in the next episode :) Or if there’s any type of setting on the camera that can help reduce noise … Anyways, I tried writing out a name in the image I posted. I think it came out pretty good …

  • http://twitter.com/zuphus Marco Presi

    here’s my “Gate to Heaven” :)

    it is one of the many installations made by a local artist (Mario Staccioli) and disseminated in the country-side near by Volterra (Pisa, ITALY).

    hope you enjoy it! :)

    ciao,

    z

  • http://profiles.google.com/pierinaandujar pierina andujar

    Wow so pretty!
    ps. i love the show! :D

    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/pierinadiez/4551975591/in/photostream]
    i like the photo cause it looks likes Seahorses :)

  • Anonymous

    That is so cool!

    I did a light painting shot the other week and made a light ball on a railway bridge!
    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/morphicx/5604974943/in/photostream]

    (how to link a photo from flickr in the comments??)

  • Anonymous

    This is the light ball I did last week!
    SO much fun to do ;)

  • Anonymous

    hahahaha… i knew someone would mention it! i am up at 6am every morning for school and this was episode happened past my bedtime :D and yes, we did mask out the strobes :) ))

  • Anonymous

    so cool, how did you make the ball?

  • Anonymous

    did you do this with a flashlight Marco?

  • Anonymous

    We usually shoot at a relatively low ISO and rely on shutter speed to give us the exposure we need :)

  • Brando

    what did you do to get from the camera picture to the finished one?

  • Brando

    i dunno what im looking at but i do seem to jus like this shot and i dunno why……….good job…

  • Anonymous

    The image is fantastic (as usual). Thanks so much for this episode. I am motivated to get outside and do some light painting now (once it warms up more here). Btw, what type of tripod were you-all using (it got really low to the ground)? Also, did you have a special attachment between the camera and the tripod?

  • Anonymous

    We just did some clone stamping to get rid of the flares :)

  • Anonymous

    Hey Ken, we added the tripod we used to the description above :) You can check out other gear we use on the Gear list page
    http://phlearn.com/gear-list/

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=691565354 Anan Adnan

    wow that is so awesome i used this with my cat and she hates me for it cause she was a sleep and i was running around her
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bastoony/5422547678/in/photostream
    this is the photo without any editing i used a small blue reading light
    thanks guys and nice shirt Aaron :P

  • Gabrielle Kalus

    dear avery and aaron,
    thanks so much for this great episode (along with all of your previous ones!). i am a student at penn state and am very interested in photography. i’ve learned a lot from my dad (he used to do a lot of weddings, senior pictures, etc.), but i am now the one teaching him about all the digital stuff. you do a wonderful job and are super entertaining! now i just can’t wait for finals to be over so i can spend all day with my camera!
    thanks again! and have a wonderful day!
    -gabrielle.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=691565354 Anan Adnan

    this is another shot she moved a little which it was kinda of awesome touch i think :P

  • Madhippo

    Cool shot. Did you add in the stars in post or were you able to recover them in RAW?

    Also, how did you focus in such dark settings with your mk2?

  • http://profiles.google.com/jimkarczewski Jim Karczewski

    Personally I like doing this with a powerful flashlight rather than a flash.. It’s much more controlled where you want the light. Granted, multiple exposures are necessary, but adding them together is easy with photoshop and layer blending modes that make it simple once you have photoshop import the files into one layered image. The attached image is 35 photos, 30 second exposures. My friend was opening the shutter, I was painting… Balanced Rock in Arches National Park from Oct, 2010

  • nicole

    Did this one at Lake Murray, O.K. with a LED headlamp tied to a shoe string. :)

  • Anonymous

    Love it Jim! You must have a really powerful flashlight!
    Did you underexpose the sky a little?

  • Anonymous

    We used a flashlight to light up the front of the tree, and focused, then set the focus to Manual. We MAY have added a few more stars in post :)

  • Anonymous

    This is exactly what we love to hear Gabrielle!
    If you have anything you want to learn, be sure to let us know
    Aaron

  • Anonymous

    A string of LED lights and just swing it around for 1 minute to make a sphere!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=557240367 Hassnal Adam Sulaiman

    nice one Morphicx. i tried making one before but my light ball didnt turn out a perfect sphere hehe.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=557240367 Hassnal Adam Sulaiman

    i loved the worried look on Avery’s face when she saw the car coming. i tot u both were gonna run!

    On another note, i think PHLearn is inspiring me to do different types of shots these days… coz now i think i wanna do some light painting. :P

  • http://profiles.google.com/jimkarczewski Jim Karczewski

    It’s a 4 cell LED Maglite. It’s not the most powerful light in the world, that’s for sure! Not sure.. but they sky is faked.. It’s from one shot. If it were combined from multiples there would be star trails because of the combined exposure time of about 1/2 hour…

  • Leo619

    Cos where there’s light painting, there’s always poi!

  • Anonymous

    Thanks! It was really fun to do!

  • Alexandre

    Hey,
    great show and great picture! you guys are awesome. =)

    I think you should find a way to promote the flickr group.
    I could not believe I was the first to join.

    Alexandre

  • http://twitter.com/zuphus Marco Presi

    no aaron. I used a torch (..and moonlight!)

  • http://www.facebook.com/sztyui Gábor Lénárt

    Hey guys, I used exactly the same technique on this picture one month ago:)
    Here is the blogpost of this photoshoot, the text is hungarian,but I hope you can “read” the pics:)
    http://sztyui.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/relax/

  • Georgino Nagy

    Wow, excellent job guys. Thanks for the tip of using pocket wizard to trigger the camera :)

  • Waseef Akhtar

    Stunner! how do you make those light balls?

  • http://profiles.google.com/oriol.segarrapol Oriol Segarra

    This tecnique was introduced by Dennis Smith. A photographer in Australia

    http://www.denissmith.com.au/

  • Jean Wornell

    Great info, realy enjoy!!

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/mighty_herring/ mighty_herring

  • Pingback: Light Painting | Nitemary Photography

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