Simple Light Painting - mastersacademy.com · Simple Light Painting en illmore All rights resered 2...

Simple Light Painting

Simple Light Painting © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 2

Simple Light Painting

In this lesson, we’re going to take a look at one of my favorite types of photog-raphy: Light painting. When you create a light painted image, you capture a long exposure when it’s dark out. During the exposure, you use a portable light source (like a flashlight) and move through the scene while “painting light” onto the sub-ject. Because it’s completely dark out, you won’t show up in the scene at all be-cause you’ll never point the flashlight at yourself. It’s only the areas where you point the flashlight that will show up in the finished image.

With this technique, it’s ok if your subject is not placed in an exciting environment. If you don’t light the background, it simply won’t appear and your subject will have a black background.

Know that we’re going to have a few lessons on light painting. With this lesson, we’re just going to get started and cover the basic techniques. To begin, don’t try to make perfect-looking images. Instead, use this lesson as an opportunity to be creative, have fun and experiment. In a future lesson, we’re going to learn how to create more complex light paintings that involve multiple exposures.

Before we start light painting, let’s look at a few examples. Some of these include some special techniques that will be briefly described in the captions.

The images above are extremely refined light paintings. They consist of many exposures that were combined together with layer masks in Photoshop. These images give you an idea of what is ultimately possible with the light painting technique.


LEFT: This is a simple light painting created using a regular flashlight and a single exposure. The flashlight was fairly close to the subject and this created a more painterly style of light. RIGHT: The subject was quickly painted with a flashlight and then he created those light streaks by moving a flashlight around, aiming the light directly into the camera. Any time you point the flashlight directly into the camera, you will get this type of “light graffiti.”

This is a light painting I created of myself. I positioned one arm, lit it, then moved the arm and lit it again. I repeated this process to make it look like I had several arms. Again, the streaks that you see are from directing the light source toward the camera.


In these images, creative effects were created by using a colored LED light source and paint-ing a shape while pointing the light into the camera. The subjects were lit with a regular flash light, aiming the light source at the subjects.

These images demonstrate that the environment is not always important. You can see on the left that the surroundings were rather boring. I did not light those surroundings, however, so they did not show up in the final result. The streaks of light you see in the final image were creating using sparklers.


FAR LEFT: The image was created using colored gels. I lit one side of the chair with a red gel covering the flashlight and I lit the other side with a green gel covering the flashlight. I then used a small blue light, aimed at the camera, to create the figure. DIRECTLY LEFT: I did not light the sub-ject at all. Instead, I swung a glow stick on a string behind her.

LEFT: This is the kind of result you can expect when creating your first or second light painting. RIGHT: This is a very advanced light painting that was created by making hundreds of individual exposures, each designed to light a very specific area of the scene.


A Note About Autofocus

This is the most common mistake that photographers make when trying to light paint for the first time. Chances are, you’re used to using the camera set to aut-ofocus and autofocus relies on the brightness of the scene. When the shutter opens, the camera uses light to determine where to focus. But when light paint-ing, there will be no light. The autofocus will try to find something to focus on but it will eventually fail. You’ll continue with the exposure and create your light painting only to find out later that the entire image is blurry.

To prevent blurry images, you’ll need to create light paintings in manual focus. Before turning the light off, focus the camera on your subject and then switch to manual focus. If you are working outside at night, you may need to shine a flash-light onto the subject in order to set the focus before switching to manual.

The Position of the Light Source

When light painting, you’re going to be in a dark environment and when you open the camera’s shutter, you’re going to use a flashlight to light the scene. The dis-tance between your flashlight and the subject is going to change the look of the effect. If you point the flashlight at a wall or other flat surface, it’s likely going to create some kind of round shape. If the flashlight is very close to the wall, it’s go-ing to create a very defined beam with harder edges. As you move the flashlight farther from the wall, the circle will get bigger and the edges will soften more and more.

If you double the distance between yourself and the surface you’re trying to light, you will only get one fourth the amount of light hitting any given area of the wall. That has to do with the light spreading out to take up four times the amount of space on the wall. What dose this mean? If your flashlight is a longer distance from the subject you’re painting, you are going to need to spend more time, let-ting the light build up to get the proper brightness.


Unlike normal photography, where your exposure is fast (1/250 second, for exam-ple), a light-painted exposure may take 10 seconds, 30 seconds or even longer. Since that’s the case, you don’t need to keep your light source in one fixed posi-tion. Through a long exposure, you will move the light source around the scene. To start, you will need to experiment a bit so that you can get a feel for what it’s like when the light source is close to the subject versus farther away. When the light source is close, the result will look more painterly and you will need to light the area for a shorter period of time.

LEFT: The light source was positioned close to the person’s hand. This created a stroke that was brighter and had more defined edges. RIGHT: The light source was positioned farther from the person’s hand. This created a stroke that was less bright and had less defined edges.

LEFT: This is the subject with the lights turned on, before starting to light paint. CENTER: The subject was lit with the flashlight positioned far from the subject. RIGHT: Here, the flashlight was close to the subject and this created a more painterly effect.


Lightpainting How-To (24:53)

When to light paint You can start light painting about a half hour after sunset. This is when there will be still a bit of blue in the sky but it will be dark enough that the light doesn’t effect the image. Alternatively, if you have a room without any windows, you can light paint any time of day!

What to light paint Start with an object that’s not super tiny. Small objects are more difficult and you’d need a flashlight small enough to limit where the light falls. In the video example, I’m going to light paint a chair.

Choose a flashlight It doesn’t need to be fancy, but it’s best to use a more modern flashlight that doesn’t put out overly yellow light.

Set up the camera It’s best to place the camera on a tripod to ensure that it doesn’t move during the exposure. Set the camera to manual mode and attach a cable release if you have one. If using a cable release, set the shutter speed to bulb mode. This setting is usually one level beyond the 30-second setting as you turn the shutter speed dial. The cable release will allow you to open and close the shutter as needed. Most cable releases allow you to slide the release button to a locked position so that the shutter can remain open while you walk away to light paint. When you’re done, you can unlock the button to end the exposure.

If you don’t have a cable release, set the shutter speed to 30 seconds, as this should be long enough for you to complete a simple light painting. Set the ap-erture in the same way that you would for a normal photograph, using an F stop that ensures the entire subject will be in focus. Set the ISO to the camera’s default setting, which is usually ISO 100, or ISO 200 for some Nikons. You want to make sure that the camera is not set to Auto ISO.

As I mentioned above, you’ll want to set the focus manually. Either turn the lights on or shine a flashlight at the subject so that you can set your focus. Then, set the camera to manual focus so that the focus point does not change during the exposure.


Experiment with the light source To start, you’ll want to get a sense for how bright things are when the exposure is a certain length. With the camera set up as I’ve described above, open the shutter, paint some light into any part of the scene, then close the shutter. Inspect the results and determine whether it looks too bright or too dark. If it looks too bright, you can correct for it by either painting faster or closing you aperture down to a higher number/smaller opening. I prefer closing down the aperture because painting faster can cause sloppy results. Clos-ing the aperture will let less light into the lens so you will be able to spend more time painting with light before things become too bright.

If you’re using a 30-second exposure If you are not using a cable release, set your shutter speed to 30 seconds, open the shutter and then paint light into the scene. When you’re done, turn off the flashlight and wait for the shutter to close. Then you can inspect your results.

Another thing you’ll want to do is experiment with how close you keep the flash-light from the subject to get a feeling for what different distances look like.

Long exposure noise reduction This is a setting that is usually turned on by de-fault and it’s important to know about. After you take an exposure, it’s going to take an equal length exposure to do noise reduction. You will need to wait for this to complete before you can view the results or take another exposure. If you would like to avoid the wait, you can turn the long exposure noise reduction set-ting off. You would instead apply noise reduction in Lightroom or Camera Raw.

Extra Pointers (32:00)

Cover the light source when you’re not painting If your flashlight is on at the start of the exposure, cover the light with your hand until you walk into the scene and point the light at the subject. Paint the subject and then cover the light with your hand again as you walk out of the scene to end the exposure.

The image on the camera display can be deceiving When evaluating your image,


know that the image on the back of the camera can be deceiving because your eyes are adjusted for the room darkness. This can make things look brighter than they actually are. It can be useful to turn down the brightness of your camera’s LCD screen so you don’t think the images look overly bright.

Objects in the distance You may see that your flashlight is reaching a wall or other objects behind your subject. Remember that every time you double the distance, you get 1/4 the amount of light. If the objects (or wall) is more than twice as far from the camera than the subject, then they will be very dark or not visible at all.

Video Example: Flashlight Close to Subject

In the following series of imag-es, I’m going to show you the test exposures I made in the lesson video. In these first expo-sures, I am going to experiment with painting with the flashlight close to the subject (about eight inches). The captions will detail the purpose of each exposure, what I thought of the result and how I moved forward to correct for any issues.

Here I am actively light painting the chair for the first test run.


After my first attempt, I could see that the light parts of the chair were too bright. To fix this, I closed down the shut-ter (making it smaller) so that it would allow less light to hit the sensor.

This next exposure is even better. I have some light streaks and background elements that are showing up, but I can remove those by painting with black on an overlying Photoshop layer.

In my second try, the bright-ness was better but I can see that the flashlight was aimed to closely toward the camera because the camera picked up small streaks above the chair. I could correct for this by aiming the light away from the camera or by creating a snoot for the flashlight, which is a little tube that fits on the end, blocking light from es-caping out the sides.


Video Example: Flashlight Far From Subject

In the previous set of images, I was experimenting with paint-ing with the light source very close to the subject (about eight inches). Now, I am going to light paint the chair again, this time painting from a longer distance. Remember, when you double the distance, you get one fourth of the light being delivered so you’ll need to spend more time on each area.

This is a screen shot of me light painting. You can see that I’m holding the flashlight much farther from the chair (about two feet).

LEFT: This is a screen shot of me quickly covering the flashlight before ending the exposure. You can see that I wasn’t careful enough because the camera captured the light. It would have been better for me to use a flashlight with a more convenient on/off button instead of covering the light source with my hand. RIGHT: Here you can see the result. The light is softer and more even when painting with the light source farther from the subject.


Here, I lit the chair from the side instead of directly the light straight down on it. This can sometimes accentuate any textures or surface detail. This also caused the back-ground to be lit more.

On this round, I spent more time focusing on the seams in the leather to make them stand out more. You can see that I also accidentally point-ed the flashlight toward the camera a few times. This is what caused those unfortu-nate bright spots.

I wanted to light the chrome better in this exposure. There is a certain angle where the chrome will light up. To find out where that is, I placed my head in front of the lens (without bumping the cam-era!) and then moved the flashlight around until the chrome was nicely lit. Then I created another exposure aiming the flashlight at this angle.


Examine the Results (59:30)

I’ve completed a few light paintings and I think I got some results that I like, so I’ll now load the images into Lightroom and examine the results. Note that you can do the same things in Camera Raw as I am going to do in Lightroom.

IMAGE ONE:

This is the first image that I captured using just the ambient light of the room. I’ll use this as my standard when evaluating the light painted images. This image was a little dark so I lightened it using the settings under the Basic panel in Lightroom’s Develop Module.

IMAGE TWO:

This is the first light painted expo-sure where I was experimenting to learn how long I should paint. I did not paint the entire chair because it was just a test image. If I thought I was going to use this exposure for something, I could adjust the bright-ness of the lit area using the High-lights and/or Shadows slider.


IMAGE THREE:

This is another test image, similar to the previous image.

IMAGE FOUR:

This is the first image where I painted the entire chair and you can see that much of it is pretty dark. That’s because I painted the same amount of light onto the dark leather as I did onto the brighter parts of the chair. I should have painted on the darker areas longer so that they would be lit better.

IMAGE FIVE:

Now I’m starting to get some-thing that’s remotely usable. I increased the Exposure slider to brighten things up a bit. The artifact that you see above the chair is what can happen when the edge of the flashlight points just slightly toward the camera. To prevent this, I would angle the flashlight away from the camera.


IMAGE SIX:

With this next image, I moved the Shadows and Exposure sliders up a bit to lighten the image. The background is showing up a good amount and I can correct that by using the Adjustment Brush (see next image.

IMAGE SIX (Being adjusted):

I activated the Adjustment Brush and used the sliders to lower the Exposure, Shadows and High-lights. Here, I am painting around the background to darken it significantly. Note that it’s best to have the Auto-Mask check box turned off when doing this.

IMAGE SEVEN:

In this next image, you can see my hand as it was covering the flashlight. I did this because this particular flashlight was not easy to turn off by using a button.


IMAGE SEVEN (Being adjusted):

Here, I am using the Spot Re-moval Tool to get rid of the light streaks. I could also go in and use the Adjustment Brush to darken the surroundings like I did with Image Six.

IMAGE EIGHT:

This is the image where I was painting the light in from the side in order to bring out the texture and three-dimensional quality of the leather. The background is a little too bright for me to attempt to paint everything dark using the Adjustment Brush.

IMAGE NINE:

In this image, I was trying to bet-ter light the seams in the chair. The edge of the flashlight end-ed up facing the camera several times, however. You can see all of the light streaks caused by this unfortunate angle of the flashlight.


IMAGE NINE (Being adjusted):

Here, I am using the Spot Re-moval Tool to get rid of the light streaks.

IMAGE TEN:

This was the final image and I think it will be the easiest image to clean up.

FINAL IMAGE: Adjustments 1

Now that I’ve selected an image to move forward with, I’ll start the adjustments. Here, I’m using the Spot Removal Tool to get rid of small light streaks.



I activated the Adjustment Brush and moved the Exposure, Highlights and Whites slid-ers far to the left. Here, I am painting over the background with a soft brush. When I am painting close to the edge of the chair, I’ll use a smaller, harder brush to avoid overspray.


I thought the highlights looked a little too bright, so I moved the Highlights slider down a bit. (This is the regular Highlights slider, not the one associated with the Adjustment Brush.)


Adjusting a Layered File in Photoshop (1:09:15)

The following Photoshop technique is a preview of what we’re going to cover in an upcoming lesson where we take light painting to the next level. If neither the camera nor the subject moved between exposures, we can layer the images in Photoshop in order to create a more refined result. Note that this will only be pos-sible if all of the images align perfectly. It’s best to use a tripod in order to achieve this.

Start by selecting all of the images in Lightroom. Then click on the Photo menu and choose Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop. The images will open as sep-arate layers in a single Photoshop document. Now, I’m going to select the best exposure and place it at the bottom of the layer stack. This will serve as the base image and I will mask the other layers to bring in only the most ideal areas from each one.

All of the different exposures have been loaded as sepa-rate layers in a single Photoshop document and I placed the best image on the bottom of the layers stack. This will serve as the base image.


I’ll turn off the visibility of all the layers except for the bottom one and I’ll inspect this base image. To me, the back leg of the chair looks a little dark so I am go-ing to find an exposure where the back leg is well lit. One at a time, I will toggle the visibility of all the other layers until I find one where the back leg is lit nicely. When I find this layer, I will turn on its vis-ibility and then add a layer mask. To add a layer mask, I’ll hold down the Option key (Alt on Win) while clicking the Lay-er Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. By holding down the Option key, I will be creating a layer mask that is filled with black. This will hide the entirety of the layer.

Now, I want to reveal the layer only in the area where that back leg is. I’ll ac-tivate the Brush Tool and I’ll make sure I’m painting with white (on a layer mask, white reveals) using a soft-edged brush. I’ll paint on the layer mask just in the area where that back leg is. Now, the leg of the chair looks bright.

I’ll follow a similar technique for other parts of the chair. I will look at the other layers individually and find places where one of these layers looks better than the base image in a particular area. I will then use a layer mask to limit where the layer is visible, showing only the ideal area from the layer.

This layering technique is what we’re going to cover in more detail in a future les-son. Then, we’ll use many, many exposures to bring out the very best areas from each layer in order to create a refined composite.

I found the layer where the back chair leg was lit the best and I added a layer mask that is filled with black.

I am painting on the layer mask with white to reveal the back leg part of the layer.

You can see that I painted with white on the mask, revealing that area of the layer.


Light Painting Tips

• Now that we’ve worked through a simple light painting, let’s review some im-portant things to remember:

• Don’t try to make perfect images at first. Just try to understand how your flashlight and your camera works.

• For your first light painting, stay away from black objects and people, as these are the trickiest to capture.

• The farther your light source is from the subject, the more even the light will be.

• Remember that each time you double the distance from the light to your sub-ject, you get one fourth the amount of light hitting the subject.

• Consider wearing dark clothing because it’s less likely to show up in the expo-sure.

• Try using a flashlight with an on/off button that is easy to toggle and doesn’t have additional settings (colors, flashing light, etc.).

Simple Light Painting - mastersacademy.com · Simple Light Painting en illmore All rights resered 2...

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