Light Painting: A Beautiful Take on a Revolutionary Style

This week I discovered my new favorite form of photography– LIGHT PAINTING PHOTOGRAPHY! This kind of photography was revolutionary for me! I didn’t need any fancy equipment; no speedlights, no flashbenders, no thousand dollar strobe light, just a dark room, some interesting products, and a pen light. The outcome? Amazing light painting photography!

The first thing I needed to do was figure out my setting. For light painting photography you need to be inside a dark room. It can be your bedroom, a classroom, your living room, even outside under the stars if there is no other light source. When you turn on your camera, make sure you Shutter Speed is at 15 seconds (you are going to need that long exposure). Next, I set my ISO to 400. Then I put my camera on a tripod (you’re going to need a tripod or you will fail). After that, I positioned my materials the way I wanted and then hit the shoot button.

I only had fifteen seconds. You need to treat your pen light like a paint brush ( get it? That’s why they call it light painting!). I traced my light over the portions of the object that I wanted to highlight. It may take you a few tries, but when I did it, they came out great! You do want to be careful for light trails. That is when your camera picks up the movement of your light and create light streaks over your products.

Here are the things I came up with for my light painting photography .

Also, check out this website that has everything you need to know about light painting photography! http://lightpaintingphotography.com/