Light painting photography

What is light painting in photography? With light painting, various light sources (e.g. flashlights) can be used to paint into a dark/darkened room with long exposure times. Exposure times of a few seconds to several minutes can be achieved. The moving light source appears in the photo as a glowing trail of light.

What is light painting?

In Greek, photography means “drawing with light”. So what is the difference with light painting? We can always speak of light painting when it comes to adding light to a scene using portable lights. The light source or light sources should not be visible in the picture or only their traces of light.

If you now think of flash and continuous light, then you could already classify these as light painting. With light painting, however, there is also the fact that we normally have a long exposure.

So two factors apply to light painting:

• We have a long exposure
• Light is added to the scene

The added light can, for example, brighten up areas in the photo or become directly visible as a light trail; the creation of light spots or aperture stars is also often used.
We therefore control a photo much more and compose it through our use of light.

For photos with light painting, we therefore have a process with planning, exploration of the area, preparation and, for outdoor shots, the weather must always be taken into account.

What do you need for light painting?

In addition to the camera, a sturdy tripod. A remote shutter release and a light source are an advantage. In the following tutorials, the MT14 from Ledlenser (here at Amazon (affiliate link) is used.

The flashlights I use for light painting photography

The flashlights I used and their light levels:

• Ledlenser MT14 (1,000 lumens) - here at Amazon (affiliate link)
• Ledlenser P6R Core QC Multicolor (270 lumens) - here at Amazon (affiliate link)
• Ledlenser P6R Signature (1,400 lumens) - here at Amazon (affiliate link)

Next complete tutorial about light painting and photography.

Collection of links to light painting tutorials

• Eric Paré with Kim (Montreal, Canada)
  great collection of photos
• https://500px.com/p/ericpare?view=photos
  Eric Paré with Kim
• How to draw shapes - very well explained in English as a Youtube video
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVcenNkNUo4
• Extensive video tutorials by Jason D.
  https://lightpaintingbrushes.com/pages/light-painting-photography-tutorials