Light Painting - Tutorial

Overview

Light painting is a technique that paints subjects with source(s) of light while the camera shutter remains open. The camera is normally mounted on a sturdy tripod as the exposure times are quite long and can vary from 20 seconds to 40 minutes and more. Like an artist paints canvas with paintbrushes, a photographer paints the scene with the light sources of choice.

Subjects of light painting can include landscape, architecture, people, or anything else for that matter.

Light painting is mostly done at night or at least after sun goes down. While it is true for the majority of cases, light painting is technically possible and can be effective to use during the day. And I am not talking about fill flash, but about real light painting with the shutter opened. You can do that with a stack of neutral density filters on front of your lens. Not only it works, but also it can produce spectacular results.


Flashlights

Most common outfit among modern light painters includes Stinger flashlight with plastic filters or/and Rosco gels.

With the overall advance of technology, it seems like many manufacturers of a flashlights started making rechargeable (or at least efficient) versions. There is plenty to choose from. You don’t have to buy expensive rechargeable flashlight to try light painting.

Flashlights are not created equal and while any flashlight will do to illuminate a subject of interest, they are all producing different effects.

While it was good place to start for me, I quickly abandoned Stinger (at least as the main source of light). I tried just about every flashlight that hits the market. With the exception of a few that don’t look they’d perform, I try them all. That’s exactly how I found how much difference a "right" flashlight makes.

By now I have a pretty impressive collection of the “light sources” that calls for vehicle upgrade (and I have a big vehicle to begin with).

While my smallest light sources include a little one that can be hidden in the closed fist, my bigger gadgets call for transporting a gas power generator (which I bought to assist the process) and can literally burn through the regular theatrical gels. Certainly, my light painting is not a “minimalist” approach.

While I find that having plethora of lightbrushes as well as their knowledge provides greater control for almost any scene I run into, it is certainly not the key for creating great light painting scene. Everybody can find their "light" niche without investing into wild amount of gadgets. And in any case, starting small an simple with a couple of tools is necessary as having too many light sources without understanding the basics and exploring all capabilities of each light source can become overwhelming and can actually hinder the artistic process.

However, keep in mind that during cool nights your flashlights / batteries will be drained very quickly. That’s also why I keep a lot of spares around, especially if I am going for a long trip.

Here is an example (on the left) of blasting my 18 million-candle lights torch at a subject (soothed with cooling filter). The cloud and the reddish glow in the sky provided interesting background, which I cooled with the filter. While far from being my best picture, it serves as a good example of using a powerful flashlight.



Next example shows one of my first light paintings where I used Stinger to fill in the shadow and to even out the exposure in the foreground.

Technique

Car – the car can aid in light painting. I use local traffic if possible, or my own vehicle if not or if I need to create a certain pattern and I am not satisfied just with the tail lights or head lights of the passing by vehicles.


Flash lights (off camera Flash) can fill the shadows during light painting while triggered multiple times. They can also be covered with gels to change the colour.

Light painting can involve just a light source, or usage of coloured gels. There are also ways to change the colour without coloured gels and one of the examples would be changing the light temperature.

In the following picture, I used the strong directional warm beam to lit two paths in order to create what I wanted in this picture:


I didn’t want to break tungsten majesty of the moon landscape and decreased the temperature of the light source and softened the light in the next picture. While I wanted to participate in creating this landscape, I wanted to go with the flow of the current scene and not to pollute it with presence of artificial light.

In the next picture (left), I wanted to emphasize plants that are growing inside of the car. I chose just to paint it lightly with the light that is similar in the colour and temperature with the overall scene. While I wanted to show the whole car I didn’t want to distract too much attention from the plants that I wanted to position against darker clouds.

For these hoodoos (below), I didn’t wipe off the frost that started accumulating on the ground glass at the end of the exposure. Hence a more “frosty” look with a little bit of halo around the head of the hoodoo. I used two different flashguns flavoured with gels to paint the scene. Breathing on a ground glass or using Vaseline (on the filter please, not directly on the lens!!!) can produce nice results if there is no natural dew/frost around.


And for the next picture below, I just went totally crazy with very intense colours.


As I mentioned, light painting doesn’t have to happen at night. Here is a shot taken in the abandoned prison (I had a couple of neutral density filters on).



I am an avid Aurora chaser, and while we are currently in solar minimum, the solar year will start peaking soon to paint the sky for me. Meanwhile, I grab occasional displays as they come and learn how to work with light painting around Aurora. Here is just simple example when the flash light painting can help to bring the details of the grass on the side of the road that otherwise would remain underexposed. Note the meteor there.


I find the next picture has an interesting effect (right). While I am not very fond of it, it is a great example how light painting can change the perception of the scene (I also keep it because of meteor).
I flooded the area in front of this wind turbine with a strong light. It was a fairly short exposure taken while the darkness was still setting in, so the stars didn’t rotate much. There was no wind, but it still rotate a bit at some point and then I flashed the turbine. The previous position of the wings renders as if it were the shadow on the wall behind the turbine and it does look like there is a dark wall behind it to me.
By the stroke of luck , the meteor shot through the sky but I stopped the shutter too early (this was around Perseudes activity around that time). I find that the real events here make this picture unrealistic and maybe even a tad fake looking. And I mainly blame flooding the structure and the foreground so much that it appears against the wall in the studio.

You can find more pictures taken at night by navigating to my gallery. I hope they provide a source for inspiration.

Technique and Exposure

Those who have background in painting could probably relate if I say that the process of light painting is very similar to painting on canvas. The light strokes are similar to brush strokes. The only thing that is different is the medium and that affects the style. If you are using water colours, the way the stroke is applied, the amount of colour and the intensity and how it is put on a paper as well as how it will interact with other colours differs from how you use oil on canvas. Likewise, painting with light is different, but would have a similar feeling. And one doesn’t have to have serious art training – most used to enjoy painting when we were kids. In fact, while the analogy is strong, and it is the closest analogy , the "actual" painting is still different.

The biggest issue I find when one starts mastering a technique is not to burn a hole in the canvas, which is your sensor or emulsion of the film (provided that we are over the underexposure and getting something on the sensor/film at all). I literally mean it, because the flashlight can burn the pixels that couldn’t be restored. Or you can burn out the moon if it is present while you are light painting the rocks.

Exposure during light painting has more dimensions to it, because while there is an overall exposure of the scene, the intensity of the light and the speed and smoothness of the strokes will affect final results. The exposure of the spot that is being light painted depends on ambient light, intensity of the light source and density/transparency of the gel filter (if gel is being used), and on the duration of time the light source stays on the particular spot.

While there are rules that work, and with experience all of these falls into place, there is no “recipe” and it’s a long process to learn how all parameters interact, especially if you want to mix in different colours into the scene.

The more subjects you incorporate into your light painting, the more difficult it becomes to “bring it all together” without burning parts of it. It also gets difficult with the full moon trying to wash out subtly painted spots. And I prefer subtle scenes to the rampage of colours, although I am known to produce some totally psychedelic light paintings that scream.

The best way is to get out there and experiment.


The process

I normally “see” the picture inside of my brain before I create it. Sometimes, I just let it all go, and it almost feels like I let something guide my choice of colours and my strokes.

Most of the times though, I either come to the scene before it gets dark and explore it, or, what’s more common, I normally know the scene, and it takes me weeks to come up with something and normally I know a lot about what I want to do with the scene.

I don’t believe in “when the mood strikes you” or in any kind of artistic inspiration. This is something I learned about in my dad’d studio when I was learning how to paint. I was an early and vorascious reader and was familiar with many biographies of famous artists. My father set me straight letting me know that the inspiration comes only to those who don’t sit around and wait for it.

So, even if I don’t feel like going out and shooting sometimes, I push myself.

People asked me very often how do I measure, track and choose my exposure. The truth is: I do not do that. And I am being absolutely serious and honest. I never track time, never count, either consciously or subconsciously. I never think about it or come up with any methods to measure the correct exposure. I just paint and then when it’s enough I stop the exposure. While it might sound not too technical, that is the only answer that I have. And for more informative answer on how to track exposure, please google the internet – there are plenty of resources. Someday I might analyze how my brain processes it and I could certainly start documenting things. But for now, the only thing that I am doing consciously, are composition and the choice of aperture. I guess I rely too much on sixth sense, but it works – I hardly ever correct exposure of my RAW files.

A word on Composition

While there is certainly a “WOW effect” in night photography, let alone light painting, the same rules of photography apply. If composition is not strong, the image will not have effect after the initial “wow” is gone. It is especially important in creating the mood. You can waste time light painting, if the composition doesn’t work, the time will be wasted. At least for some reason I don’t believe in dumping a tripod in the middle of junk yard and just starting strobing around. At least not if you want to produce something that impacts.

It is quite difficult to compose in the dark. If I don’t know place well, I normally snap pictures of the scene during the day. I study them and then when I get back at night, I conjure it from memory and if needed, I will flood the scene with light.

Very helpful to learn Fibonacci numbers (sequence) and start translating them into visual patterns and recognizing them around; which is not that difficult, even for those who are not mathematically inclined. They are also beautiful. It is just a matter of discipline. Then it will start coming naturally, with time though. The rule of third works, but it’s just a simplistic method that works. But you can’t tailor your scene to this all the time and even if you do – it will be boring. I quite dislike the composition of most of my 1/3 rule proper pictures.

While I am sure we all appreciate the input of our buddies, it is still helpful to learn from the ancient and from the famous artwork and just suck it all in. Aside from the fact that it will help with composition, it actually can be enlightening and interesting.


Influences

There were three men who influenced my light painting approach and one man who influenced my night photography. They are O. Winston Link, Karekin Goekjian, and William Lesch . While Mr. Link’s work encourages me not to be afraid to go big in the technical realm, Karekin Goerkjian’s work inspires me to look more inwards before venturing out into the night. What absolutely draws me to Karekin’s work is that I find pictures so beautifully ephemeral and opened to interpretation; I never get tired to come back to look at his images and I can perceive different vibes every time I come back to look at the same pictures. His images make me think and feel, deeply.

While I don’t feel William Lesch’s work influenced me as profoundly as Karekin's in my quest of finding myself, his amazing and clever process turned on my inquisitive and ever-searching mind and encouraged not to stop until I can say: “eureka!”. While I understand that he accomplishes his objectives to light paint all parts of landscape using different techniques (such as partially exposing the image during the day), my ideal to which I am moving to is also to light paint “the whole thing”. Mister Lesch succeeded in keeping my mind extremely aroused around his art, which is normally hard to sustain. I can also relate to “no pain, no gain” factor. His work is a glaring example of how diligence and sacrifice combined with talent pays off.

Since most of my light painting is done at night, I am happy to mention the man who helped me to believe in further progressing with night photography, and his name is Steve Harper. And while I was flirting with nocturnal photography for a while, I feel it was Steve who gave me a blessing to pursue night photography. Steve’s RB 67 got me into the medium format photography, which I find, is a “happy” medium at night. Steve also passed me his love for tungsten blue and while I tend to get warmer on occasions, I come back to shower in tungsten that almost feels metallic.

Afterword

While this tutorial is just an initial attempt to write about this fascinating and complicated process, I hope you enjoyed it and learned something. I normally correct my English as I learn more of it, but my position here is that if you do know how to light paint well, you won’t need my tutorial. However, if you happen to learn something from it, please appreciate content without judging the form (English is my 4th language and I am still struggling with it).

I threw this tutorial together at the spur of moment, while I was nursing flu. I never thought of creating one, but I really enjoyed writing it. Time permitting, I will be adding more information. Although I am extremely busy, I am still happy to answer to constructive comments and while I am not inclined to share all of my secrets, I am more than happy to help with advice on how to get started.

Check out my other blog postings, they contain some information here and there. And visit my web site to get familiar with what I do.
Happy light painting!