Orange Rose painted with light

Painting your photos with light. I don’t think this is a very common lighting technique in Digital Photography, but it can produce some very interesting results, and just about every photo has something unique about it.

I started painting my photographs with light many years ago when only film cameras where around. I don’t remember how I found out about the technique, but it was probably from some article in a photo magazine.

I would go out at night by a river, or just use my car as the subject, and with big spotlights, I would take long exposures and “paint” all the things in the viewfinder with the spotlights. I got some cool results, but unfortunately I am in Switzerland now and my old photos and negatives are still in the USA, so I can’t post any on here.

Since they were done with film, I would have lots of wasted film, because with light painting, you never know how the photo will look and if you applied enough light to the subjects or not. Now with digital cameras, you can take a photo, look at it immediately, see what you have to do differently to get better results, and delete it if it was too bad to keep. Digital photography makes it much easier to get good results in light painting your photos.

Since I have been in Switzerland, I have only done light painting twice, and both times it was of a rose in the comfort of our apartment. I don’t have a big spotlight and I wouldn’t feel comfortable going out at night and shining a big spotlight on someones old house or building, getting them upset, and then trying to explain what I am doing when they only know Swiss German and German. With all the cool old buildings here, I know I could get some really cool looking light painted photos, but for now I don’t feel comfortable doing it, so I will stick with just small subjects for now.

I have some light painting tips here, Light Painting Digital Photography Tips.

If you have some light painting photos, we would enjoy seeing them, so post them here along with some information on the photo. If you haven’t tried to light paint, then you should try it, and if you have questions ask us here, and then post your results.

Another tip about light painting, is not to apply too much light or the subject will just look like it was lit with a flash. You have to practice and experiment with different amounts of light and different sources of light, until you get the right combination.

For the rose photo I posted, I used a small flashlight and quickly moved the flashlight around the flower, lighting up the areas that I wanted lit. The ISO setting was 100, F-stop was f/20, and the shutter speed was 30 seconds.

The photo of the rose was taken on Dec. 23rd, 2009.

So now lets hear from you, and see some of your light painting work. Thanks for stopping by, Bob