How to Light Paint in Photography

Light painting is something I have begun to experiment with lately! I just think it is so fun and unique. Light painting is fairly simple, and just requires some trial and error.

What you will need:

In addition to your camera you will need a tripod.  A tripod is absolutely necessary if you want crisp clear images.  Another thing you might want to try is using an off-camera flash.  You will also need a completely dark setting. No ambient light in the room at all, or it will show up in your picture. (which is another option-see below).   

Settings:

Start with a low ISO around 100-500. Then adjust your aperture.  If this is a self portrait it is best to close down and have a higher f-stop.  This will give you a wider range of focus. Next step is to pick your shutter speed.  Depending on what kind of light painting you are doing you can go anywhere from 1 second to about 30 or 60 seconds.  If you want a lot of light painting and you have a separate subject, I have found the best setting is bulb, and then you can hold open your shutter as long as you’d like.  Try out your settings and adjust accordingly. 

Experiments:

To freeze motion, you can use flash.  For the following pictures I used an off-camera flash and set it to go off once.  (If you have a fancy camera and flash you can set it to go off multiple times which will freeze your subject many times in one frame.)  I then had my subject walk around with glow sticks, or wave them around.  Consider where you are painting.  Make sure you are not putting the light right where your face would show up in the picture. (Unless you want that.)  For me, I wanted the face to be the focus.  Depending on how long you keep your shutter open for will affect how much light you will be taking in. I have found moving the light slowly also makes the light trail much brighter than if you move around quickly.

Slower Light Painting Image:

Faster Light Painting Image:

I had to hold the shutter speed open longer for the bottom one, and it is a much more blurry light trail than the previous image.

For this next two pictures I set my camera up for 1- 2 second shutter speed.  This is a self-portrait, so I used the self-timer on my camera.  I also left a lamp on a few feet away from me so that my camera would pick up the ambient light. This effect is much blurrier.  The light was pretty orange because my lamp gave off that color. I love it against the blue background.  

Types of light you can use:

You can use any type you want! For this image below I used my book light.  I have also used glow sticks, and sparklers.  You can use a flashlight, or phone light. Try out lots of things! Please feel free to share your light painting images with me! I’d love to see them! Light painting is such a fun experiment.  Here are a few other sources to reference for more information about light painting:  

https://petapixel.com/2016/07/25/basic-guide-light-painting-photography/

https://ericpare.com/light-painting-tutorials

https://digital-photography-school.com/light-painting-part-one-the-photography/

Thanks for reading!

A Sister Shoot in Faust Park, Chesterfield, Missouri

I have absolutely hit the jackpot here! These two girls are not only the sweetest, but they are so beautiful too! A photographers dream! We were visiting St. Louis, and they had scoped out this location for me. It is a hot spot for photographers, as they were everywhere. With good reason! It is a very lovely place. I bet though, if you looked at everyone’s photos, they would be completely different. That’s what’s so great about photography. You can use the same location, but all photographers have a completely different style. Without further delay, here are the pictures from this session.

One of my Favorite Lenses- Lensbaby Twist 60

The twist 60 is part of the Lensbaby series. Their website says: True to an 1840 design by Joseph Petzval, this lens reveals striking separation between subject and background. Twist 60 is a metal-bodied, non-tilting lens that mounts directly to your camera.

My Lensbaby Twist 60 is one of my favorite lenses to get me out of a creative slump.  It is a 60mm f/2.5 manual focus lens.  This is the most unique lens in my camera bag! It gives a twisty swirl around the edges of photographs.  It naturally gives a vignette when shooting with a wide-open aperture.  So, to me, the photograph has a very vintage feel when used. 

This lens utilizes a central focus. The swirl will be very prominent at wider apertures, but when you close down it is not nearly as noticeable.  It is best to use on a full frame camera, as the central focus point might be too wide on a crop sensor camera.

I love the lens flare that you can get with the twist 60.  It handles light so differently from my other lenses.  Sometimes you can get nice light leaks, or even a full ring of light flare.  

This lens is not equipped with auto focus, so you must manually set your aperture and focus. It is kind of difficult to use the manual focus. But it helps me to use my sensor in the camera to let me know when I have achieved focus.  This appears as a small dot in the bottom left hand corner of my viewfinder.  So, with some patience, perfect focus is achievable!  With quick moving kids it is really hard! I have to keep reminding my kiddos to SLOW DOWN! (extra bribery is always required, but always worth it, ha!!)         

Buy your own: here! And start creating beautiful and unique photos of your own!    

Thanks for reading!