"How to Paint Light" by Justin Q.

Being a photographer for about almost 6 years has taught me some interesting photography tips and tricks. With that being said I believe it is now time to teach some of you a very cool and simple thing called “Light Painting”.  Light Painting is a type of photography where in the picture being taken you illuminate a object with a light and the final result is a sweet looking picture with only that single object being lit up and everything else in the background isn’t.

What you will need is:

●      A DSLR Camera 

●      Tripod

●      LED Bar

            - Optional: A cover of some sorts for the LED Bar (In my case I use a Nike Gym Sack)

●      The object you want to light paint

●      Time

Direction to set up your camera settings:

●      Step 1: Turn on your camera

●      Step 2: Turn you ISO all the way down to the lowest # (Mine being 50)

-       Your ISO is basically your exposure, The lower your ISO is the less grain your picture has and the higher the ISO, the more grain your picture will have.

●      Step 3: Set your F/ (Your aperture) to again the lowest it can go (Mine being F/1.4)

-       Your F/ (F Stop) which is your aperture is the control to how much light you are letting in through the lens. The lower your F/ is, the more light your are letting in and vise versa with the higher your F/ is,the less light you are letting in.

●      Step 4: Set your shutter speed to ~20 or 25 or 30 seconds

-       Your shutter speed is how fast or how long you take a picture for, both your aperture and shutter speed control how much light you let in. Faster shutter speed = Less Light / Slower shutter speed = More light.

●      Step 5: Set your camera to manual focus (Switch will be either on your lens or your camera)

-       You want to use manual focus for light painting because autofocus won't be able to focus on the subject due to it being night time and dark.

Now that you have your camera setup, lets get into the actual light painting part.

Directions for painting:

●      Step 1: Get your camera on the tripod

●      Step 2: Setup your object or subject you want to light paint

●      Step 3: Make sure your subject is infocus, you don't want a blurry picture

●      Step 4: Turn on your LED Bar (make sure the light isn’t pointed at the subject / object yet)

●      Step 5: Whenever you're ready click down on your shutter button to start taking the picture

-       Note: you only have that certain amount of time you set to paint the subject.

●      Step 6: With the LED Bar go to the subject and slowly sweeping over or across the object once or twice with the light emitting from the LED Bar.

-       Note: If your picture ends up with streaks from the LED Bar use a cover to prevent that from happening.

●      Step 7: After going over the subject with the LED bar turn it off and run out of frame and wait till the long exposure finishes.

Example of finished product: 

And with step #7 being the last step, your picture should of came out nice and crispy if you did everything correctly. If you don’t get it right the first time try, try, and try again until you get the perfect picture. Have fun out there at night light painting things!