Light Painting and Photography
September 21st
#lightpainting #nightphotography
Painting with light, that is using a torch to light up your foreground to your awesome backdrop, is my favourite thing to do when shooting at night. In fact you can achieve great effects in just using your car headlights if you can get your car to where you want to shoot from.
I have fond memories of being perched on top of a road cutting above the main highway out of Chillagoe, tripods set up with remotes attached, 2 friends and the obligatory glasses of white with cheese platter, AND TORCHES! It can take a bit to get the amount of light required just right, depending on the distance between you and the subject you want to light up and also the strength of the torch. I have a super powerful torch, which is sometimes too much, as it only needs a second to light up the foreground enough together with a long exposure for the background. Its also good to light up the subject from an angle away from the camera position, so if you have a helper, even better.
A torch where you can vary the diffusion of the light is perfect.
Things to be aware of while light painting is to get everyone shooting all on the same times, and to be careful of not overdoing the amount of light (as it just looks too fake) and careful not to light up the ground in the very foreground, as then it can just look like a flash has gone off. It takes some practise but so much fun waiting for the image to write to card, which can take a while with one minute long exposures, and then seeing what you have created.
Here are some examples of failed and semi OK shots of the same subject...
The first shot here is without light, just the moon from behind the subject, great silhouette.
This shot is possibly the best of these 4 with just enough light on the boulder though not very even with the foreground lighting
#lightpainting #nightphotography
Painting with light, that is using a torch to light up your foreground to your awesome backdrop, is my favourite thing to do when shooting at night. In fact you can achieve great effects in just using your car headlights if you can get your car to where you want to shoot from.
I have fond memories of being perched on top of a road cutting above the main highway out of Chillagoe, tripods set up with remotes attached, 2 friends and the obligatory glasses of white with cheese platter, AND TORCHES! It can take a bit to get the amount of light required just right, depending on the distance between you and the subject you want to light up and also the strength of the torch. I have a super powerful torch, which is sometimes too much, as it only needs a second to light up the foreground enough together with a long exposure for the background. Its also good to light up the subject from an angle away from the camera position, so if you have a helper, even better.
A torch where you can vary the diffusion of the light is perfect.
Things to be aware of while light painting is to get everyone shooting all on the same times, and to be careful of not overdoing the amount of light (as it just looks too fake) and careful not to light up the ground in the very foreground, as then it can just look like a flash has gone off. It takes some practise but so much fun waiting for the image to write to card, which can take a while with one minute long exposures, and then seeing what you have created.
Here are some examples of failed and semi OK shots of the same subject...
The first shot here is without light, just the moon from behind the subject, great silhouette.
This shot is lit up from the left hand side but not quite evenly enough
This shot is possibly the best of these 4 with just enough light on the boulder though not very even with the foreground lighting
Definitely too much light all around.
This shot we used just the cars trailing headlights to light up the rocky outcrops, which meant we could just expose for the sky getting those last colours from the sunset showing through
These two shots are both Ok but I prefer the second one with a more targeted area of the gnarly tree exposed with the torch, and a shorter exposure time as well.
Love gnarly trees!
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