I belong to a camera club in the Denver area. Last night our subject matter was Long Exposures (over 1 second). There were, of course, some fireworks photos and night shots and I put in one of my B&W infrared photos. The photos I was intrigued by were the light paintings.

Painting with light is a fairly simple technique. It can be done with a long exposure and a flash, a flashlight, a small LED light off your keyring, or a spotlight you’d find in the average outdoor store. Since you are not able to see the exact effect until the exposure is done it may take many tries to get a good picture. Put your camera on a tripod, use Manual exposure and experiment.

Judging exposure may be tricky. Shooting in a dark area where all the light is coming from a flashlight is easy. Set the camera to F11 (a good guess for a starting place) and 15-20 seconds to give you enough time to ‘paint’ around your subject. Click the shutter and start shining your light around your subject. Preview the image on your LCD, change your aperture (keep the time the same) if needed, rinse and repeat.

My favorite shot was a rocky beachline just after sunset. The rocks were painted with light with a spotlight during the 30 second exposure. Stunning result. Beautiful sky color, the water was milky and smooth due to the long exposure and the rocks had good detail. A normal exposure would have rendered the rocks as silhouettes.

The next time you shoot some long exposures try painting with light. It’s really fun. Now go out and shoot something.