night photography & light painting

Night Photography & Light Painting Tricks, tips and secrets to improve your night photography

By Brent Pearson

© Brent Pearson 2009

Table of Contents

Introduction 4 Foreword from the author 5 A Logical Progression 7 The Buzz of Light Painting 8 The Different Types of Lightpainting 9 A Photographer Who Does Some Beautiful Light Painting 10 Security 11

Part 1 - Night Photography 12

The Camera 13 Tripod 13 Cable release 13 Torch 14 Spare Camera Battery 15 Accessories 15

What You Need to Know 16

Familiarity with your camera 16 Turning Off Long Exposure Noise Reduction 17 F-stops and understanding exposure 18 How to read your camera histogram 19

The Challenges of Night Photography 21 Challenge # 1 – Navigating in the dark 21 Challenge # 2 - Composing your shot 22 Challenge # 3 – Focusing 22 Challenge # 4 - Calculating your Exposure 22

Calculating your exposure at night 23 Noise and Night Photography 23 Estimating Exposure Method # 1 – High ISO test shots 24 Estimating Night Exposures Method # 2 – Pocket Chart 26

Planning Night Shoots 27

Understanding the ambient light 27

Determining sunrise and sunset times 27 Ideal time to photograph at night 30

Different Types of Night Photography 31

Photographing Lights 31 Photographing Landscapes 32 Startrails 34 Software for Post Processing Startrails 35 Processing Your Night Images 36

Part 2: Light Painting 37 Equipment 39 Light sources 40

My Journey of Experimentation 40 Building a light wand 48 What you need to buy 48 Assembling the Light Wand 50 Other lighting Sources 54

Light Painting techniques 56

Light Painting Method # 1: All-in-camera 56 Light Painting Method # 2: Isolate-and-blend 57

Light Painting Step-by-step 59 Setting up 59 The base exposure 61 Selective lighting 61 Light painting techniques 61 Example 1: Middle Head Bunker 65 Example 2: Malabar Head Bunker 69

Post Processing 73

RAW conversion 73 Noise Reduction 73 Creating your composite image 74 Finishing Up 83

Getting Help 84 Final Words 85


Introduction

Dedication

This is the first book I have written and I wasn’t going to

bother with a dedication, but I have changed my mind

This book is dedicated to my father… the old fossil.

My Dad ignited the love of photography in me more than 30 years ago.

He patiently taught me the ins and outs of black and white photography.

Now I am lucky enough to enjoy my passion with my father.

We go on shoots together and both enjoy each other’s company as well as

our photography.

I am very lucky and I appreciate it.


Foreword from the author

First of all, thank you very much for

buying this e-book. It represents

several years of accumulated

knowledge of night photography and

light painting. I’m hoping that this e-

book will literally save you years of

experimentation and trial and error and accelerate your

nocturnal learning.

More importantly if you haven’t done much night

photography, I hope this book excites you enough to get

out at night experimenting. It is a lot of fun.

I’d like to start this e-book off with a caveat. I’m not an

author! I’m a photographer. This is my first e-book and

I’m planning to write and produce it without an editor or

publisher. At times my grammar might not be correct,

however I’m confident that I know my subject and

hopefully I’ll do a good job in communicating it to you in

a casual and informal manner.

Anybody that knows me will attest to the fact that I’m

not big on formalities. So I’ll be writing this e-book as if I

was talking to you in a social setting.

Enjoy

Brent

Newport Pool At Night By Brent Pearson


Don’t rip me off… please! I’m putting a lot of intellectual property into this e-book.

If you are venturing into the world of night photography

and light painting, then this e-book will probably save

you about a year of trial and error. I’ve priced this eBook

to be affordable for everyone. So please please… don’t

forward this e-book to your friends. Just send them the

link so that they can buy the e-book for themselves.

Surely the reward of advancing your night photography

and light painting skills by 12 months is worth the price

of this e-book.

About this e-Book I have tried to lay out the contents of this e-book in a

logical manner. It is not designed as a “cookbook” where

you can just jump to a particular page. The concepts in

this e-book build your knowledge in a logical way. So if

you have not done much night photography, you should

not skip to the section on light painting as it assumes you

have picked up the basics of night photography from the

preceding chapters.

Cute Pool At Night By Brent Pearson


A Logical Progression My photography went through a logical progression. I

have always been attracted to landscape and seascape

photography.

As I started taking more and more seascapes, I started

enjoying the abstraction that long exposure photography

delivers to a seascape image. All of the detail in the

water becomes blurred, clouds full of detail also blur into

subtle background canvases… and what you are left with

is detail around whatever your point of interest is…

whether that is rocks, a jetty, sand, etc.

I started enjoying this long exposure photography, and in

my desire to do more it, I found myself photographing

earlier and earlier in the morning before sunrise. It

didn’t take me long to wake up to the fact that I was

essentially now shooting at night and that if I started

going out later rather than getting up earlier I would

have a lot more time to shoot (and more time to sleep).

I found the step into night photography to be quite

daunting for a number of reasons (see The Challenges of

Night Photography on Page 23 for some of the reasons

why). I was in hindsight incredibly lucky on my first

night photography outing. The sky was absolutely

perfect for long exposure photography and I ended up

with some rather crude but none-the-less exciting images

that got me hooked straight away.

As I started to understand the ins-and-outs of night

photography my results started becoming more

consistent as opposed to hit-and-miss. After a while I

found myself starting to experiment with some crude

light painting using hand-held torches. While I was

highly dissatisfied with my own early light painting

tests, I started researching other photographers who

were specializing in light painting and night

photography and started studying their images for clues

on their techniques.

I quickly realized that there was not much published

information in one source that would accelerate my

learning. There was a lot of information scattered

around about light painting with film and simple light

sources, but I couldn’t find anything that really showed

me how to approach the subject using modern lights or

digital processing techniques.

After studying quite a number of photographers, the one

thing I really learned was that the quality of the light that

you use to paint your landscape scenes dramatically

impacted the finished result. The only information that I

could find referred to either camera flash units or hand-

held torches. So in the absence of studying other

people’s learnings, I pretty much had to start doing my

experimentation with different light sources.

It didn’t take me long to become entranced with the

creative possibilities of light painting, and the fact that it

was pretty much unchartered territory.


The Buzz of Light Painting For me light painting is exciting for a number of reasons;

§ It’s a definite photographic niche that really has not

been explored.

§ Light painting offers the photographer a whole new

level of control on their images…. It’s a bit like taking

the control of studio photography outdoors.

§ It’s experimental – this is not a definitive guide to

light painting, this e-book just represents my body of

knowledge for you to build upon. I hope you can all

build upon my knowledge and together we can

really push this genre of photography to a new level.

Malabar Bunker # 2 By Brent Pearson


The Different Types of Lightpainting When you hear photographers talk about light painting,

it is important to understand that this term can actually

refer to quite different styles of photography in much the

same way that night photography can refer to different

styles (eg: photographing cityscapes and lights,

landscapes taken at night, or photographing star trails).

You can classify the term light painting into two quite

different categories:

Category 1: Using a visible light source to make light

trails that are captured by the camera.

Category 2: Using a light source that is not visible by the

camera to illuminate the scene selectively… painting it

with light.

Obviously you can also create images that mix

techniques in the same image.

This e-book will primarily be focusing on the techniques

described in category 2. Illuminating or painting a scene

by a light source that is not visible to the camera.

Dance By Toby Keller (aka Burnblue)


A Photographer Who Does Some Beautiful Light Painting While the focus of the eBook is primarily on light

painting that does not show visible light sources, you

may want to check out some of the photographers who

create lovely work that includes the light sources.

One of my favorite photographers in this category is

Toby Keller (aka Burnblue). Toby is a San Francisco

based designer and photographer who has done some

gorgeous night photography and light painting. Toby

uses both light painting techniques in his work and really

does some lovely work combining visible light sources

with the environment in the scene. His website can be

found at http://www.burnblue.com

Fire Tunnel By Toby Keller

Light Gathering II, Hendrys By Toby Keller

http://www.burnblue.com/


Security Before we get into the meat of this e-book, I want to state

what should be fairly obvious to all of you. Because you

are photographing at night, there are a couple of safety

considerations to think about before setting off on your

nocturnal excursions.

Things to be careful of when shooting nature or

wilderness shots.

1) Always try to scout your locations in daylight. At

night when you are navigating from your

headlamp, it is extremely easy to become

disoriented and get lost, even on tracks that are

familiar to you during the day. You may want to

consider using a GPS to navigate using waypoints.

2) Consider photographing with a buddy, or at the

very least employ some of the basic safety

precautions that you would use for bush walking

or hiking. An example of this would be to notify

somebody of your planned path and estimated

time of return. Even for what seems like a simple

trip, it doesn’t take much to slip on a rock or

stumble on a tree root and damage your leg. You

might end up spending a long cold night on your

own.

3) Careful of remote areas where you may encounter

“unusual” people. Some of the places I like to go

include remote parks and ruins that can be great

“hangouts” for some unusual people. Sometimes

they may not appreciate being disturbed, so take

care and use common sense.

Even if you are shooting urban locations where you are

not out in the wilderness, you should still consider your

safety from other people who may be wandering around.

If you are wandering around shooting in alleyways with

thousands of dollars of equipment around your neck,

you might just prove too irresistible to some of the locals

who may need some extra cash.

I should point out that I have never had any problems

with security during any of my night shoots, however I

do think about this aspect during my planning process

and take appropriate precautions.


Part 1 - Night Photography

Now it’s time to start getting down to business and

talking about what you need to take successful night

photos.

We’ll start by talking about the equipment you need,

then some of the theory and finally we’ll get into the

execution of the shoot and the post processing.

Seen Better Days By Brent Pearson


Equipment For Night Photography The Camera Lets start with the most important piece of equipment,

the camera. You need to choose a camera that has the

following;

§ A manual shutter mode that can be set to “bulb”

(which basically means you can hold the shutter open

as long as you like). Pretty much all digital SLRs will

have this capability. Not many point and shoot

cameras can do this, and you will need to check out

your own camera if you have a prosumer camera.

§ An optical viewfinder – LCD viewfinders will be

useless at night.

§ Manual Focus – Your automatic focus may have a

hard time (with the exception of cityscape night

photography), it’s much better to have a camera that

can be focused manually.

Tripod You will need a tripod for nocturnal work. It’s essential.

Almost any tripod will do, however the sturdier the

better. Especially if you start experimenting with light

painting or photographing star trails. Then you want a

tripod that can remain perfectly in place while taking

multiple exposures.

Cable release You will need a remote shutter release for your camera.

Typically this is going to be a cable that plugs into your

camera body. Unless you want to stand next to your

camera for long exposures holding the cable release, you

want to make sure that your cable release can be locked

in the depressed position. This way you can press the

shutter and lock it in the open position and walk around

enjoying your night location while exposing.

Some cameras have wireless remotes to trigger the

shutter. I’ve never actually tried these, but I can’t

imagine that they would be overly suitable for night

photography as I don’t believe you can lock them open.

If somebody has one of these units, I would love to hear

any feedback if this assumption is incorrect.


If you do start really getting into night photography, then

at some point you will probably want to upgrade your

cable release to one of the more sophisticated units that

include automatic timers, delays etc. These make night

photography much more enjoyable because you can just

“set and forget” and the timer will ensure that your

shutter closes at the correct time.

A more sophisticated cable release with timer options built in

Torch You will need to keep a torch handy when you are

working at night. I typically use a torch in the following

situations:

§ To help me navigate to and from my shooting

location.

§ To help me compose and focus by shining a bright

light on my focal point.

§ To find accessories in my photo bag.

You should minimize your use of a torch, as it will

interfere with your night vision. For this reason it is

important that you learn how to use your camera’s

controls by feel.

I keep two torches with me when I’m working at night. I

recently bought a new head torch that I just love. I will

talk more about it in a later chapter about light sources.

It is the Black Diamond Icon torch and it is incredible.

You can read more about this torch here.

In my pocket I like the Surefire G2 because it is small,

robust, exceptionally bright and also uses rechargeable

Lithium Ion batteries.

More information on Surefire flashlights can be found

here

http://www.bdel.com/gear/icon.php

http://www.surefire.com/Flashlights

http://www.surefire.com/Flashlights


Spare Camera Battery Night photography will drain your camera batteries

much faster than daylight photography. Your camera is

using energy to hold open the shutter for long periods of

time. For this reason you should carry at least one spare

fully charged camera battery (I typically keep two fully

charged spares in my bag at any one time).

Accessories The other accessories that I carry when I’m out shooting

at night include coloured lighting gels to put over my

light source to create different coloured lighting effects.

At a pinch you can use cellophane, but it is much better if

you use proper lighting gels from Lee.

Because you typically only need a small square to cover

your flash or light wand, you might be able to buy some

“offcuts” from a local television production company. I

think it’s worth a try.

For more information about Lee lighting gels, click here.

http://www.leefiltersusa.com/lighting/products/range/ref:I46C9C0C1B557F/

http://www.leefiltersusa.com/lighting/products/range/ref:I46C9C0C1B557F/


What You Need to Know I have received many emails from photographers telling

me that when they tried night photography it was a

disaster and they didn’t get any images that were usable.

This can obviously be a demoralizing experience that can

put you off night photography for good. To try and

avoid this I strongly recommend you do a bit of

homework and preparation to ensure you understand

what you are getting in to.

Before you embark on your first night expedition, I

suggest you do some backyard tests. This will help

prepare you for the challenges of night photography and

allow you to be better prepared so that your first “real

expedition” is successful.

Familiarity with your camera You need to be familiar with your camera’s controls. The

best way to achieve this is to get out in your backyard

and take a few experimental shots in the dark. Don’t

worry about trying to nail composition, focus or

exposure, just set your camera to manual mode with a

“bulb” setting on your exposure dial and do a few test

images…. 30 seconds, 1 min, 2 mins, 4 mins and 8 mins

with an aperture of around f5.6 You will definitely get

some images out of this.

However, you will need to familiarize yourself with the

following functions of your camera as you tend to use

these at night.

§ Playing back your image on your camera’s LCD. You

will want to study your images regularly for focus,

composition and exposure.

§ Ensure you know how to bring up your camera’s

histogram (see


How to read your camera histogram on Page 19).

§ Adjusting your camera’s ISO setting

§ Adjusting your camera’s shooting mode (into

manual)

§ Adjusting your camera’s focus (into manual)

§ Adjusting your camera’s f-stop

§ Zooming in your playback image to confirm focus

§ Ensuring that long exposure noise reduction is turned

off.

Turning Off Long Exposure Noise Reduction Now this might sound a bit counter-intuitive, but most

digital cameras have a feature called Long Exposure

Noise Reduction (LENR) that is designed to reduce

sensor noise generated by long exposures. You need to

consult your camera manual and turn off this function.

For most cameras this functionality will only kick in once

your exposure time gets greater than a few seconds. To

understand why I am recommending that you turn off

this functionality, you need to understand how this

works in your camera.

Lets say you take a 1-minute exposure with LENR turned

on. Your camera would hold the shutter open for 1

minute, and then once the shutter closed you would get

some form of indication that the camera is “processing”

your image. Your camera is taking a second exposure of

1 minute in duration with the shutter closed.

Because the shutter is closed, the image should be totally

black (called a “dark frame”). However, if there were

noise being introduced by the sensor, then this image

that should be black would instead register traces of

noise induced by the sensor.

The camera then takes your original image and

“subtracts” the dark frame. The logic being that if you

have noise in a 1minute exposure that should be black,

then you probably have the same noise in your long

exposure image. So the camera tries to minimize the

noise by “subtracting” it from the original image.

While this should result in images with lower noise, the

trade-off is not worth it in my opinion for longer

exposures. Often when you are shooting night images

you might be exposing for 4 min, 6 min or longer. It is

too long to wait around for an additional 4 or 6 minutes

for the camera to do it’s processing.

Instead I prefer to rely on noise reduction processing in

my postproduction workflow using the Noise Ninja

Plug-in from Picturecode. Using this method I have

found that I can produce high quality images without

having to rely on in-camera long exposure noise

reduction.


For more information on noise and post processing of

noise see the following sections;

§ Noise and Night Photography on Page 23

§ Noise Reduction on Page 73

F-stops and understanding exposure If you do not have a solid understanding of f-stops and

exposure or you are a bit rusty then now would be a

good time to brush up on some of the theory. You will

need to understand the relationship between f-stops,

shutter speed and ISO. I’m not going to go into the

theory of this in this e-book as there are plenty of

excellent resources already written on this subject. Here

are a couple of links to good exposure primers should

you need to brush up.

§ Understanding exposure: shutter speed, aperture

and ISO

§ Basic Photo Tips: Aperture, shutter speed and ISO

The reason it is important to understand the relationship

between exposure and f-stops is because the technique

that I advocate involves taking a series of test images at

high ISO speeds to help you compose, focus and estimate

exposure. To move from a correctly exposed test image

to the appropriate settings for a high quality image you

need to drop the ISO settings and adjust aperture and

shutter speed to compensate. So you need to be able to

do the math in your head.

Doing the math is pretty easy as long as you understand

the three progressions that dictate exposure

1) Shutter speeds

30s, 15s, 8s, 4s, 2s, 1s, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/125,

1/250, 1/500 etc.

2) ISO speeds

ISO50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12500

3) f-stops

f1, f1.4, f2, f2.8, f4, f5.6, f8, f11, f16, f22 etc.

http://photodoto.com/understanding-exposure-shutter-speed-aperture-and-iso/

http://photodoto.com/understanding-exposure-shutter-speed-aperture-and-iso/

http://photo.net/learn/basic-photo-tips/aperture-shutterspeed-iso/


Tip:

f-stops can be a bit tricky to learn in comparison to ISO or

shutter speeds because the relationship between the

numbers can seem obscure. So here’s a great trick for

remembering f-stops. You don’t need to remember any

more than 2 numbers to generate all the f-stops.

Just remember 1 and 1.4

Then leap frog the numbers over each other and double

them and you have the f-stop table.

So I’ve given you the first two numbers 1, 1.4… then you

leap over 1.4 with 1 and double it… that gives you 2. 1.4

leaps over 2 and you get 2.8…. keep going and you have

all the f-stops.

How to read your camera histogram Understanding how to read your camera’s histogram is

especially important in night photography for a couple of

reasons.

1) You can’t rely on your camera’s intelligent light meter

to make exposure decisions for you… the light levels are

too low for the meter to work effectively

2) When you evaluate a picture on your camera’s LCD at

night, it will often appear bright and correctly exposed

even when it is 2 stops under exposed. Your LCD can

easily deceive you because of the low ambient lighting

levels.

For these reasons, you really should evaluate your

exposure by using your camera’s histogram.

If you don’t understand what a histogram is or how to

interpret it, please check out this resource.

Understanding Your Digital Camera’s Histogram

http://www.nikonians.org/html/resources/guides/digital/histogram_101/


The Challenges of Night Photography Night photography definitely has it’s own set of

challenges that make it much more difficult than

shooting during the day. Here are some of the main

issues that you should be aware of, as well as some

recommended approaches to tackle each challenge.

Challenge # 1 – Navigating in the dark If you are photographing in a new location, navigation

becomes a whole lot trickier once the sun goes down.

Even trails that you are familiar with during the day can

be confusing and disorienting at night.

Recommendations:

1) Where possible scout your location during daylight

and remember key navigational points to help you

navigate at night.

2) Invest in a hand-held GPS for hiking. These GPS units

allow you to program in waypoints from maps (and

Google Earth). So if you are going to shoot at a new

location and you don’t have time to scout it out first, at

least download some key waypoints that you can follow

at night to help you find your location and return home.

GPS units often leave a track of where you have been, so

if you leave your GPS unit on when you are hiking for a

night shoot, then once the sun goes down you can follow

your GPS trail back out.


Challenge # 2 - Composing your shot So now that you have arrived at your location and set up

your tripod, the next challenge facing you is seeing

through the viewfinder and composing your shot.

Recommendations:

1) Use a hand held torch to illuminate some foreground

objects

2) Use a hotshoe-mounted bubble-level to help you get

your horizon straight

3) Take a high ISO test image and observe the

composition on your LCD

A hotshoe bubble can help you get your horizon level at night

Challenge # 3 – Focusing Similar to challenge # 2, It can be hard for your camera’s

autofocus to lock in on a landscape image if the focal

point is further than your camera’s AF Assist lamp can

illuminate. It’s also hard to view focus in the viewfinder

because it is so dark.

Recommendations:

1) Use a hand held torch that you can shine on a focal

point in your scene and manually find focus in the

viewfinder (this is my preferred method).

2) I have seen some photographers put their headlamp

down on a focal point in the scene and then they focus on

the light from their headlamp.

3) I’ve also seen photographers use the infrared AF Assist

that comes on some external flash units to help their

camera autofocus. I haven’t tried this method myself.

Challenge # 4 - Calculating your

Exposure This is probably the trickiest aspect of night photography

because most people have come to rely on their accurate

in-camera light meters to set the camera for the correct

exposure. These meters are useless for two reasons

1) The light levels falling on a scene are generally below

the threshold of most light meters.

2) In-camera light meters can only calculate the

exposures up to 30seconds (as that is the maximum

shutter time before you get to “bulb” setting).

We will cover a couple of different approaches to

calculating night exposures in the next chapter.


Calculating your exposure at night This is probably one of the most important chapters on

night photography. Most photographers who have a go

at night photography get disillusioned if they can’t get

well-exposed images. Often they give up in frustration

and never try it again.

This chapter will take you through the approach that I

use.

Noise and Night Photography Before we get into how to calculate exposures, it is

important to understand a little bit about noise and how

to minimize noise.

Night photography pushes your sensor to the limits, if

your sensor is generating noise, then you will notice it

the most at night when you have low light levels

competing with the noise from the sensor.

However, I have found that noise can be effectively

managed providing your exposures are accurate and that

you do not try to push your image in RAW conversion

by dragging your exposure slider to compensate for an

under-exposed image. There is no surer way to make the

noise in your image pop out than amplifying it during

post processing. For this reason, it is always better to

slightly over expose and then darken your image in

RAW conversion than to underexpose.

If you would like to read more about some of my early

noise tests, here are some links from my blog.

§ My Geeky analysis of noise and night photography

§ More findings on noise and night shooting

Turimetta Rocks At Night By Brent Pearson

http://brentbat.blogspot.com/2008/02/my-geeky-analysis-of-noise-and-night.html

http://brentbat.blogspot.com/2008/02/more-findings-on-noise-and-night.html


Estimating Exposure Method # 1 – High ISO test shots This is the method that I use to calculate my exposures at

night.

Step 1: Compose and focus your image

Step 2: Set a high ISO on your camera

Turn up your camera’s ISO setting to either 1600 or 3200.

Step 3: Set your aperture and shutter

I usually start with my f-stop at f5.6 and my shutter

speed at 15 seconds.

Step 4: Take your first test exposure and observe the

histogram.

An underexposed histogram

A perfectly exposed histogram

Step 5: Adjust and re-shoot

It is rare that you will nail your exposure on the first go,

so if your test image was over exposed, then you can

either dial down your ISO, or close down your Aperture

(eg: change it from f5.6 to f8).

If your test shot was under exposed then you can

increase your exposure to 30 seconds and/or open up

your aperture (eg: f4).

Keep making these adjustments until you get a well-

exposed test shot.

Lets assume that after a bit of experimentation you found

that a good exposure was obtained with the following

values:

§ Aperture = f 5.6

§ Shutter speed = 30 seconds

§ ISO = 1600


Step 6: Time to do the math

While the above values have given us a correct exposure,

the high ISO rating would undoubtedly produce excess

noise, so generally it is recommended to dial your

camera down to either the native ISO setting or ISO 200.

As you move down each stop, you need to keep track of

the adjustments you made…. I typically talk out loud

when I’m doing this step…. Here’s the way it goes.

“I need to move my ISO down from 1600 to 200….

ISO 800 = 1 stop

ISO 400 = 2 stops

ISO 200 = 3 stops. “

If I wanted to close down my aperture by 1 more stop

(from f5.6 to f8) to get greater depth of field, then I would

keep counting…

“Ive’ got 3 stops to adjust from my ISO settings and I

want to go from f5.6 to f8… that’s 4 stops”.

So now I know that my ISO and Aperture are set to take

the image. But I have to add 4 stops of light back to the

shutter speed to compensate… so I continue counting.

“30 seconds to 1 minute is 1 stop

1 min to 2 min is 2 stops

2 min to 4 min is 3 stops

4 min to 8 min is 4 stops”

So now I know that I need to expose this shot for 8

minutes to compensate for the reduced ISO rating and

for closing my aperture by an extra stop. So my exposure

will now be:

§ Aperture = f8

§ Shutter speed = 8 minutes

§ ISO = 200

If you didn’t follow the above step, please re-read it until

it makes sense, if your knowledge of f-stops, shutter

speeds and ISO ratings is not strong, then I urge to go

back and read this section - F-stops and understanding

exposure on Page 18.


Estimating Night Exposures Method # 2 – Pocket Chart If that sounds too complicated, then here’s a simpler

method that should get you in the ballpark. I produced

this handy pocket chart based on an excellent article

written by Fred Parker called “ The Ultimate Exposure

Computer”.

Fred has explained a way that you can calculate any

exposure without the aid of a light meter by

understanding the light intensity of various scenes. He

then provides the tables to help you convert these light

intensities into exposure recommendations. I took Fred

Parker’s work and with his permission I produced this

handy pocket guide that focuses on providing exposures

for the light values you typically encounter at night.

This is how you use the chart…

In the top left corner you will see that the chart only

works if you set your camera to an ISO setting of 200

(which is generally the setting I use for most of my night

shots).

Down the left hand column you will see the light values

for different moon phases from no moon (-6ev) through

to a full moon (which provides about -3ev of light). So

when you are out shooting, take a look at the moon and

determine which row you should be reading off.

The final step is to read across the row at the various f-

stops to explore the different shutter speed combinations.

Lets work through an example, If I am out shooting

under the light of a half moon, and I would like to shoot

at f5.6, then your exposure would be 4 min @ f5.6 at ISO

200.

Of course if there is cloud reducing the moonlight on a

scene, then you will need to modify your exposure

accordingly.

This is usually a good starting point, and after that you

can manually adjust your shutter speed or f-stop based

on your camera histogram.


Planning Night Shoots When planning a nocturnal photographic shoot there are

a few special considerations that need to be taken into

account over and above all of the normal planning that

you would do for a shot.

Understanding the ambient light I’ve turned up to more than one location at night that

looked great during the day only to find that there were

some awful sodium vapor lights spilling light all over the

scene I was planning to photograph. This light will have

implications for your colour balance, exposure time and

also the balance of the scene between foreground and

background.

I generally try to find locations that have very little

ambient light spilling on them, this allows the moon (or

my lights) to do the illumination.

Determining sunrise and sunset times Once you have identified a location that is free from

ambient light, you need to examine the sunset time in

your area. If I have the time available, I like to try to get

to my shooting location about 20 minutes before sunset

for the following reasons:

§ It means you are navigating to your location during

daylight

§ You have plenty of time to scout your location for

different shots etc.

§ The sunset itself might be worth photographing

§ Dusk is a great time to start exposing as you can get

some lovely blues and purples in the sky.

While it is easy to get sunset information from a

multitude of sources, I really like to the information that I

get from The Sun & Moon Calculator written by Jeff

Conrad. While this interface may not seem to be overly

intuitive at first, once you understand the power of this

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/sunmooncalc/


calculator you will just love it. Pretty much any question

a photographer wishes to answer regarding sun and

moon position can be answered by this tool.

An example will help you to appreciate the power of this

calculator.

Lets say I wanted to take a photograph from this pool at

Coogee beach with sun rising directly over Wedding

Cake Island. All I need to do is take a compass bearing

from the pool to Wedding Cake Island (lets say it’s 90

degrees). Then I can go to the Sun & Moon calculator

and ask it to give me a list of dates when the sun will rise

at precisely 90 degrees.

A list of dates that meet the criteria will be displayed. In

the example above, the calculator tells me that I should

shoot on 10th or 11th March for the Sun to rise at precisely

90 degrees.

In addition, the calculator also generates tables of sun

and moon positions at different times of the day or night.


Understanding the moon cycles Examine the following table from the sun and moon

calculator that shows you sun and moon information.

The Rise column shows you the time the moon rises

The Phase column shows you the phase of the moon (1 =

full, 0 = no moon)

Follow along and get used to interpreting the tables by

answering the following questions…

1) When does the full moon occur?

2) What dates is the moon around 50% full?

3) What time does the moon rise when it is full?

4) What time does the moon rise 4 days before being full?

5) What time does the moon rise 4 days after being full?

Thee answer to these questions should give you a sense

of the best times for night photography.


Answers:

1) Full moon is on Tues 10th March

2) The moon is a half full on 4 March and 19th March

3) On a full moon it rises at 18:40

4) The moon rises at 16:01 4 days before it is full

5) The moon rises at 20:41 4 days after it is full

Ideal time to photograph at night I always plan to do my night photography the week

leading up to a full moon because the moon is getting

bright and it is also already relatively high in the sky.

When you move to the days just after a full moon, you

find that the moon rises later and later, meaning you

really need to shoot in the middle of the night rather than

in the early evening hours.

The main exception to this rule is if you are specifically

going after star trails. When shooting star trails, you

want hardly any light in the sky to make the stars really

bright. So the best time to shoot star trails is the two

weeks after a full moon.

Wreck of the Sygna By Brent Pearson


Different Types of Night Photography So far I have been talking about night photography as

one category; however there are several quite distinct

genres of night photography.

§ Cityscapes and lights

§ Night landscapes

§ Star trails.

Photographing Lights Photographing city lights is relatively easy and quite

rewarding. The reason it is easier to shoot than say

landscapes is because there is so much contrast between

the lights of a building and the surrounding landscape

that you will almost always produce pleasing images of

one part of the scene…. Perhaps it’s a black environment

with detail in the coloured lights of the buildings, or

perhaps you have exposed to get details in the

surrounding landscape and the building lights are blown

out. Either way the images can look wonderful.

I’ve seen some particularly effective High Dynamic

Range (HDR) techniques being used at night to reduce

the dynamic range of the scene

I can't cite the author as it is in Russian, but you can view more of their

work at http://2photo.ru/2008/09/24/fotograf_pod_nikom_alcove.html

A detailed discussion of HDR is outside the scope of this

book, but if you would like to find out more about it,

check out the following resources;

How to create HDR images using Photomatix

http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr-guide/


If you would like to take a small step into night

photography, then photographing the lights of your city

or town is a great place to start. It’s relatively easy from

an exposure perspective (and also to compose your

shots) and you will almost always be happy with your

first efforts.

Zinc Smelter By Brent Pearson


Photographing Landscapes If you want to move to photographing landscapes at

night, the first question you need to ask yourself is “why

am I planning to shoot at night in the first place”? You

will be taking a long exposure of the landscape, and if

you haven’t planned your shot properly, it can look

almost exactly like a landscape image taken during the

day… which begs the question “what’s the point of

shooting landscapes at night”?

There are generally two answers to this

1) You want to use the long exposure to capture

movement in the scene (eg: clouds moving, water

blurring, trees blurring etc.)

OR

2) You want to hold the shutter open so you can

manually paint the scene with light to make it more

dramatic.

Night landscapes look fantastic when you have

movement in the images and the long exposure gives

you the opportunity to convey that sense of movement in

the still image.

So when you are planning and composing your

night shots, look for movement to create dramatic

effect. If you have no clouds in the sky, then that

takes away one element of movement… perhaps

head for water if you can.

Night Flight By Brent Pearson


Startrails Capturing star trails is a specialized form of night

photography, and there are two very different techniques

for how to do this.

1) Use one very long exposure

2) Take a series of shorter exposures that you blend in

post processing.

Each of these techniques has pros and cons, I’ll describe

each technique in detail and then walk you through the

benefits and drawbacks of each.

Method 1: Capturing one very long exposure

As the heading suggests, this is really a case of setting

your camera up, calculating a very long exposure for the

landscape, and then locking the shutter open for that

duration. The star trails are captured in the one shot and

little special post processing is required.

Pros

§ Simple method

§ Little post processing is required

Cons

§ Can be tougher to get the landscape exposure precise

§ Potentially noisier image (I haven’t tested this myself)

§ If your battery fails while exposing you have lost all

your work.

Startrail test 1 By Brent Pearson


Method 2: Blending lots of 30sec exposures together Here’s how this method works. You take an exposure of

the landscape (as described in Calculating your exposure

at night on Page 23)

Once you have captured a good exposure of the

background (and without moving your camera), you

change your shutter speed from “bulb” back to

30seconds and set your camera’s motor-drive function to

continuous shooting. Then you lock your cable release

button down so that your camera starts shooting

continuously. As soon as the first 30second exposure is

complete, the camera will immediately start exposing the

next thirty-second exposure. This will continue until

either

a) Your memory card fills up

b) Your camera battery goes flat

c) You’ve had enough and you unlock the cable release.

Pros

§ Gives you more flexibility in getting the exposure

right for the landscape.

§ If your battery dies, you will still have a card full of

images to process

Cons

§ You need to post process your images (see below)

§ You end up with a lot more images to manage

Software for Post Processing Startrails The method you choose is largely up to you, I’ve seen

excellent results from both methods. Personally I prefer

method 2 because it gives me greater control over the

image in post processing.

If you do use the second method then you will need

some software to help you post process the images. The

good news is that there are a few different software

packages around that are free.

Here are two solutions for blending startrails:

§ Startrails Self Running Application (PC)

§ Startrails Photoshop Action

http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html

http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html

http://www.schursastrophotography.com/software/photoshop/startrails.html


Both of these packages do the same thing, but in quite

different ways. Startrails Photoshop Action opens the

files sequentially and flattens them into one master

image.

Startrails.exe is a free-standing external application that

is very intuitive and easy to use.

You simply select your landscape exposure.

If you have taken a dark frame you can select that image

(Dark frames are taken to simulate the effect of long

exposure noise reduction processing. For more

information see Turning Off Long Exposure Noise

Reduction on Page 17)

You then point to the folder containing your batch of

30second exposures and tell the application to process.

You can watch the startrails being assembled from your

sequence of photos… it’s pretty cool. Once you have

assembled your startrails you can process them as you

would any normal image.

Processing Your Night Images My standard workflow for processing any night images

is as follows;

1) RAW conversion (I turn off sharpening and noise

reduction in my RAW converter).

2) I immediately run Picturecode’s Noise Ninja plug-in

(this software package does an incredible job of

minimizing noise).

3) I then run my RAW pre-sharpening and begin

processing my image as I would any landscape capture.

When we come to the section on light painting I will go

into a lot of detail about blending light painted images

into a composite file.

http://www.picturecode.com/





Part 2: Light Painting

Sculpture By The Sea By Brent Pearson


Now we are at the fun part… we had to cover the basics

of night photography as a pre-requisite to talking about

light painting.

If you have found that night photography has opened up

a whole new world of photography for you, then you

better buckle up, because the possibilities with light

painting are so much more exciting and creative.

I have been experimenting with light painting for about

18 months now and while my photos have come a long

way, I can honestly say I am still a veritable babe-in-the-

woods when I start thinking about the possibilities. Here

are just some of the different ways that you can

experiment with light painting:

§ Different quality light sources

§ Different reflectors and enclosures around your light

§ Different light angles

§ Different capture techniques

§ Different coloured gels and light sources

§ Visible light sources

§ Light painting different subjects (landscapes,

buildings, portraits etc.)

§ Different post processing techniques

The Artist By Brent Pearson

(note: this was shot at night and is 100% light painted)


Equipment If you are the “DIY type” then you will find this section a

lot of fun and it will probably make you want to run out

to the hardware store straight away and start buying bits

and pieces to build experimental light wands.

The good news is that if you have been experimenting

with night photography, then you don’t need much else

to take the next step into light painting. It really is just a

case of choosing light sources that suit the style of images

you want to create.


Light sources This is probably the most important section of this eBook.

Understanding the impact of light sources is central to

the look and feel that you will achieve with light

painting. The good news is that there is no “right way”

or “wrong way”. It simply comes down to what sort of

effect you are trying to create and what works for you.

Without a doubt, my experimentation with different

light sources has advanced my light painting techniques

significantly. It has helped me to understand and

visualize how these light sources interact with the

nightscape. The experiences that I share with you in this

chapter should be viewed as a starting point to accelerate

your learning, and should not be viewed as the be-all-

and-end-all of light painting.

If you take away one piece of advice from this entire

eBook, I would encourage you to remember this…

Light painting is still very much the “Wild West” of

photography. There is a lot of exploration to be done and

this is your chance to start playing with different light

sources and techniques to create some light painting

images that truly carry your unique style. So please

build your own contraptions and conduct your own

experiments. And I would especially love it if you could

share the results of your learning with me.

My Journey of Experimentation I would like to take you through some of my own

experiments so that you can take away some of my

learning without having to recreate the various gadgets

and gizmos that I built (especially the failures).

Attempt 1: Camera flash unit

I made a few crude attempts at using a camera flash as

my primary light source, but I wasn’t satisfied with the

results. It was like painting with a paint roller when I

wanted a fine precise brush. I couldn’t control the light

spill and my flash unit was washing out all the subtleties

of the images. So as a primarly light source I am not

keen on a flash gun, however I keep one in my camera

bag as this is often a great tool for illuminating the inside

of buildings that you are shooting from the exterior.

Results

§ No control

§ Hard to get an even spread of light

§ No subtlety at all in the quality of light


Attempt 2: Household torch

My next crude attempts involved shining an ordinary

household torch on a couple of rocks that I was shooting

at night. Needless to say this was not very successful for

three reasons:

Results

§ Torch was not strong enough

§ Torch was not even enough

§ Torch had a colour temperature around 3200K, which

gave everything a yellow/orange glow.

Attempt 3: Surefire LCD torch

I started doing a bit of research on more powerful torches

that had a higher colour temperature than a normal

household torch. It didn’t take long before I came across

these very cool little Surefire LCD torches. They are a bit

like a baby mag-lite, although they seem to pack a much

more powerful punch, have rechargeable lithium Ion

batteries and have a colour temperature somewhere

around 5000K (closer to daylight).


Test results from the Surefire torch

I ran a test outside on a tennis court and was particularly

interested in the even-ness of the light. The test results

are shown to the left. When you first look at this test

image, you might think “wow, that’s cool”, however, as

you look a bit closer, you will see that the light is not

overly even.

Results

§ Torch was not even enough

This test did get me excited, but at the same time I

realized that I had to solve the problem of the light being

uneven. I started thinking about different light sources

that could give me a more even light quality. That’s

when I started thinking about the possibility of

fluorescent lights. Fluoro lights certainly throw an even

light…

This was worth exploring!


Attempt 4: My camping fluoro light.

This was my first "home made" creation.

A blacked out camping light

The only fluoro light that I had lying around the house

was an old camping light. I wanted to see if I could mask

the light source so that it was effectively “invisible” to

the camera. I did a very crude job of covering it with

black cardboard leaving only an aperture of light coming

out of one direction. Compare the results in the image on

the right with the same test that was run with the surefire

torch on the previous page.

Results of my first fluorescent light painting test


Now I started getting really excited for two reasons. The

first was that the light was incredibly even and the

second was that the colour temperature was even cooler,

perhaps 6000K which was closer to moonlight.

Results:

§ Nice even light

§ Great colour temperature

§ Nice light quality

§ Not much power - You had to be close to your subject

to get much coverage.

At this stage I started thinking about how I could

increase the power and light intensity of a fluoro light so

that I could use it at greater distances. I also needed to

think about a form factor that would be easier to use than

my old camping light wrapped in cardboard.

Attempt 5: 12V portable fluorescent tube

I tried an auto dealer to see if I could get a portable fluoro

work light. I chose the most powerful unit they had and

proceeded to modify it for my use. I also purchased a

reasonable size 12v battery that would give me plenty of

light painting time.

I modified this light in a few ways,

1) I put spade connectors on to fit my battery connectors

2) I fitted an on/off button to the cord so that I could

control the light easily

3) I covered the light in black cardboard except for an

aperture for the light to come out in a narrow beam.

The form factor of the fluoro tube made this a very easy

light to manipulate out on location. I gave the light it’s

first test run when I shot this image of Forrester Rocks. I

used the hand-held fluoro to light paint the big rock in

the center, and then I used my Nikon flash unit to pop

light at the two rocks in the background that were hard

to reach because of the water.


Forrester Rocks By Night And By Light By Brent Pearson

This was a break-through image for me for several

reasons;

1. I had totally pre-visualised this image and went

up to Forresters Rocks to capture it. It was totally

planned and executed reasonably well.

2. It proved to me that I was on the right track based

on the light quality of the fluoro on the foreground

rocks.

3. It showed me how much light painting could

enhance a night image and add a whole new

dimension.

The following image shows the same scene without any

light painting.

Results:

§ This was definitely a big success for me.

§ Nice even light

§ Lots of control over light direction

§ Not much intensity

§ Greenish colour cast

I then began thinking about light sources that could give

me more light intensity. I started reading about the latest

generation of high intensity LEDs and thought about the

possibility of building a wand with a heap of LEDs

packed together. I started reviewing circuit diagrams

and began to work out how to calculate the resistance

you need etc. I was now heading down a dangerous path


and definitely getting out of my meager DIY comfort

zone.

Then I came across an online catalog for some high-

powered portable LED lights. I ordered one of these

units and was excited about the possibilities of this new

light source.

Attempt 6: Hand held LED wand

When I got the unit, I liked its form factor and the fact

that it ran on rechargeable batteries. I was optimistic and

went out that night to give it a test. Unfortunately once I

turned the light on in the darkness I was severely

disappointed by the quality of the light. It was patchy,

harsh, and blue. I ended up ditching it immediately

because I could tell with my eye that this was not going

to be a flattering light. Useful perhaps for some special

effects, but this was certainly not going to be my

workhorse light.

Results:

§ Terrible light quality – too harsh

§ Reasonable intensity

§ Appeared too blue

§ Uneven light

While I was learning a lot by experimenting, I still felt

somewhat disappointed. I hadn’t found a light source

that had the right combination of power, and quality. I

can certainly understand why many photographers may

have been turned off well and truly before this point. It

does take a lot of persistence and stubbornness to

experiment like this.

I found myself wandering around lighting shops talking

to proprietors who thought I was a bit of a nutcase. I

would find myself aimlessly meandering down the aisles

of hardware stores staring at the different lights and

thinking about what might work.

My next break-through came when I was on the Internet

looking at various portable lighting solutions for

caravans and solar powered homes etc. As I looked at

different power configurations, I was struck by how

many of these solutions were actually 240volts (the mains

voltage in Australia). I noticed that these solutions

essentially involved 3 components:

1) A Battery

2) An inverter - kind of like the opposite of a transformer.

An inverter converts a DC power source (from a battery)

into an AC power source.

3) A 240 volt light (or other appliance like a fridge etc.)


I already had a rechargeable 12v battery that I had

bought for my fluoro.

I didn’t know much about inverters, and as I started

researching them I found that I could get one on eBay

very cheaply (easily under US$30) as I figured I didn’t

need to get a high powered expensive one.

Now I just needed to think about lights. Because I could

now use 240v lights, this opened up a whole new set of

options to play with. I settled on the compact fluoro

tubes that seemed to emit a tremendous amount of light

in an energy efficient manner. I also loved the fact that

these lights were rated at daylight colour temperature so

I didn’t need to play around with daylight balancing

gels.

I had to buy a few other bits and pieces to make it work

(light socket, switch, cable), but when I got the light

home that night and rigged up my prototype, I was

absolutely blown away by the power of this light and the

even light quality. At last I had broken through and

found a light source that really worked for me.


Building a light wand Now that you have followed my journey and got some

understanding of the pros and cons of various light

sources. Hopefully you are dying to get out and build

your own light painting wand so you can start your own

experiments. This section will take you through the

build process to construct your own light wand.

I hope you take my ideas as a starting point only. I’m

sure that there are some very switched on engineers

reading this who will laugh at my crude light wand and

will design a better solution immediately. If you do,

please send me photos of your light rigs.

Having said that, I have now used my light painting rig

on many night shoots and it has served me well in the

field. It has the following qualities:

1) It’s fairly light weight and portable

2) It’s pretty robust

3) It allows me a lot of flexibility in controlling the

light spread

4) It’s easy to use and pretty practical

5) It is cheap to construct

What you need to buy

12v rechargeable battery – Cost is < US$20

I purchased this from a local electronics store. You can

buy batteries of different capacities. My battery is rated at

7 Amp Hours. I have never run out of power on any of

my night shoots. I should probably test it to find out

exactly how many hours of light painting I get on a full

charge, I just haven’t gotten around to doing this yet.

Perhaps you can get away with a smaller and lighter

battery.

12v Inverter – Cost is < US$20

.

For those of you in 110v countries (eg: USA) you will

probably want to go with 110volt inverters. In Australia

our mains power is 240 volts, so I picked up a 350W


inverter from eBay and it works like a charm. Again, I’m

not sure if I need a 350W inverter as I am only powering

a 48W light, but I figured it wasn’t much money or

weight so I’d rather have the extra capacity than risk it

blowing.

High capacity compact fluorescent light – Cost < US$40

I picked up this light from the local

hardware store. They have a range of

different lights, it is important to buy one

that has a daylight colour temperature

(not a warm light). I chose a bayonet

fitting (as opposed to the screw-in

version shown in the picture.

More information about this light can be

found here.

I’m sure you will be able to find equivalent

manufacturers in your country. As I browsed eBay

looking for “Compact Fluorescent light bulbs” I came

across a huge array of different bulbs. I even saw one

behemoth that was 200W which they claimed was

equivalent to a 600W incandescent light bulb. That

would make it approximately 4X brighter than the bulb I

am currently using. If you had to paint large expanses

from a distance this might be useful.

Electrical cable, socket and light switch - Cost < US$10

I picked up these parts from the hardware store; these are

standard parts that you would find on any portable light

and they connect the light to the inverter.

Olive Oil can and misc bits and pieces – Cost ?

This is where the

components get a bit … lets

say “rustic”.

Now that I had found a

solution that gave off plenty

of wonderful light, I needed

an enclosure that would

protect the bulb and also let

me control the spread of the

light with some sort of

“barn doors”.

This is very important as

controlling the light is

critical to creating some of

the lighting effects we will discuss later. As I rummaged

around the house, I found a large tin of Olive oil that my

wife had in the pantry. A few quick measurements with

a tape measure confirmed that this would fit my large

fluoro globe as well as the socket.

http://www.nelsonlamps.com.au/viewprod.aspx?pid=302374

http://www.nelsonlamps.com.au/viewprod.aspx?pid=302374


I had my enclosure, and I just needed a few bits and

pieces to tidy it up.

§ Matt black spray paint

§ Flexible tubing to glue on the edges of the barn doors

§ Glue to hold the tubing in place

§ Black gaffer tape to cover the sharp edges of the can.

Assembling the Light Wand


Once you have all the components, it’s time to start

building.

Step 1: Empty and clean the can

If your olive oil can is full, then empty the oil into

another container and give the can a good wash in hot

soapy water.

Step 2: Cut open the barn doors

I used a sharp pocket knife to puncture the front and

then some tin snips to cut the front aperture. You cut an

“I” shape cut in the front. You are not actually removing

any of the can, just allowing it to bend back into barn

doors.

CAUTION: Once you have made these cuts, you will

find that the edges of the tin are razor sharp. I would

strongly recommend you tape a few layers of gaffer tape

over the edges to prevent you from cutting yourself.


Step 3: Drill a hole for the light socket

I had to go and buy a circular drill bit that would neatly

cut a hole in the bottom of the can. When drilling this

hole, make sure you drill it on the opposite end to the

handle. The handle is very useful for holding and

clipping to your belt. Make sure you allow enough room

for the large 48W fluoro light so that it doesn’t hit the

back of the can.

Step 4: Glue on edge protectors

I was so concerned about the sharp edges of the barn

doors I decided to put some heavy-duty protection on

them so that I wouldn’t cut myself. I bought a small

length of PVC tubing from the hardware store, made a

small slit up the length of it with a sharp knife and then

filled it with glue and jammed it over the two front edges

of the can.

Step 5: Apply gaffer tape over top and bottom edges.

Once the edge protectors were dry I then put several

layers of gaffer tape over the top and bottom edges of the

barn doors.

Step 6: Spray Paint the light wand enclosure

I decided to spray my light wand matt black to reduce

the visibility if I was going to use it in the camera frame

(and also because I didn’t want to be seen wondering

around with a can of olive oil hanging from my belt). I

guess if you are feeling like decorating it, you could go to

town with stickers, paint etc.

Step 7: Screw in the light socket.

You should ensure that the light socket is firmly attached

to the can so that there is no wobbling or rattling.

Step 8: Wire in the power cable and switch.

I purchased a simple rocker switch and attached it to the

power cord about 1m from where it connects to the light

wand. This allows me to hold the light wand in one

hand and have the switch in the other hand to easily turn

it on and off.

Step 9: Connect the light bulb

My light globe was a bayonet mount, so once I put it in to

my light wand, I had to screw up an adjustable collar to

stop the bulb from bouncing around. Once this was done

the entire unit was very stable.

That’s it! You should now have your own high-powered

fluoro light wand. To test it you need to make sure your

battery is charged and then connect it to your inverter

and plug in your light wand.


Portability in the field

I have a great little hip pack that I use for hiking. This

proved to a perfect container for my light painting gear.

I keep the battery in the main compartment, the inverter

in the front smaller compartment and I clip the light

wand to the handle at the top using a carabineer. This

means I can hike in to locations with my hands free for

camera and tripod. I can also carry spare globes or water

in the hip pack if required.

This set up makes it easy to carry and use the gear.


Word of Caution

I’ve spoken to “experts” at electronics

stores who assure me that the battery

would not deliver enough punch to be

dangerous to me in the event of an electric

shock, however, I have not validated this.

(and hope not to).

Because I enjoy photographing seascapes at night, I am

often walking around in pools of water with my 240volt

rig. If I know I am going to be photographing around

water then I plug my light into an Earth Leakage Circuit

Breaker hoping that it will trip if I do somehow slip in

the water and short out the light.

I would advise you to take your own protection and use

your own judgment regarding the risk of electric shock.

Other lighting Sources Besides my main light wand that I have described above,

I also use a number of other light sources.

Flash units

When I am light painting I will carry a flash unit in my

camera bag for occasions when I want to blast out some

light from inside a room or through windows. Usually in

these situations I am putting coloured gels over the flash

unit to create an ambient coloured light. Examples of

this technique are shown in this shot of the Middle Head

bunker.

Flash with pink gels created colour in this bunker shot


High Powered Headlamp

I’m quite excited by this find. I recently had to buy a

new head light for night photography because my old

trusty Petzl light had gone astray. I went into a camping

store and purchased one of the newer headlights on offer.

Their top of the range light was called the Icon by Black

Diamond. What attracted my attention was the super

bright three-watt LED that can illuminate up to 80m on a

fresh set of batteries. I figured this would be perfect for

light painting some distant subjects that I couldn’t reach

with my light wand.

I have now used it for light painting and it is indeed a

wonderful addition to the light wand. The super bright

LED also helps tremendously with focus and

composition. I would highly recommend a light like this

for those who are getting serious about night

photography and light painting.


Light Painting techniques I’m sure there are numerous techniques that can be used

for light painting; I will describe two techniques that I

have used:

1) Doing it all-in-camera

2) Isolating-and-blending in postproduction

I always use the second technique for a number of

reasons:

§ You get far greater control over the different elements

that you are painting in your image

§ It’s easier to get exposures correct for each element

you are light painting

§ It gives you greater flexibility in positioning yourself

(and your light source) for light painting

§ It does require more postproduction but that also

gives you greater control of the final image.

Light Painting Method # 1: All-in-camera As the name suggests, this technique is the more obvious

and simpler way to light paint. It involves calculating

your exposure for the scene you want to shoot (see

Calculating your exposure at night on Page 23).

While your camera is exposing you start illuminating

specific elements of your scene using the appropriate

light sources. I’ll talk more about techniques for using

your light in the step-by-step guide on page 59). You

will need to experiment with your light distance and

duration in order to correctly balance the light from your

light wand with the ambient light in the scene.

The major advantage with this method is that you have

minimal postproduction to do. You will see the finished

result immediately in your camera’s LCD screen.

One thing to bear in mind with this approach, you are

not limited to standing out of frame when you paint. As

long as your light source is not visible to the camera you

can walk around inside your frame illuminating specific

points of interest (think back to the test images of the

tennis court). You just need to keep moving to avoid

capturing a ghostly image of yourself holding the light.

Your light needs to be shielded from the camera. You

can use your body to do this or a piece of black cloth or

cardboard - anything to block the direct light from your

camera.


Light Painting Method # 2: Isolate-and-blend I have evolved this technique through trial-and-error and

have found that it gives me tremendous control and

creative options. The only down-side is that it takes

more time during the capture stage as well as in

postproduction. For me this is a reasonable trade off for

more creative latitude.

Here’s a high-level overview of how it works. You

initially create a “base exposure”. I refer to this as my

“stage”. This is a normal night exposure of the scene you

want to paint.

So my base (or stage image) is lit by moon light or

ambient light and I often expose this perhaps 1 stop

under exposed. I use this base image as the starting

point for my light painting and I literally blend in

features from subsequent exposures over my base in

postproduction using Photoshop. You aren’t

illuminating the scene with any lights while capturing

the base exposure. The reason I think of it as my “stage”

is because it is a good analogy.

If you go and watch a live production on stage, usually

the stage itself has been lit, but then the key actors or

performers are highlighted using spotlights.

This is my base image for Forresters By Night. I wasn't exposing for the

rocks because they will be replaced.

The Finished Image with Light Painted Rocks


Once I have created the base image, I now start to plan

how I am going to paint my scene. I will then adjust my

exposure to either 30 seconds or 60 seconds and record a

series of light painting “runs” on various elements of the

scene. This is where I experiment a lot with different

angles, intensities, colours etc.

In postproduction I examine my light painted elements

from the scene and start working out which

combinations I want to blend together with my base

image. Because I am masking in just the light painted

elements, it means I can walk around inside the frame

and I don’t have to worry about the camera capturing me

because I am only going to be using the illuminated area

of scene and not the section that contains me or my light.

In the shots below, you can see my 3 light painted images

that I blended into the base image on the previous page.

The rocks at the back were hit with a flashgun, while the

rock in the centre was painted with a low power

fluorescent light.

The three light painted images that were blended in to the base image to create the final composite image.


Light Painting Step-by-step Now that you have your gear ready to go and an

overview of the concepts of light painting, I am going to

take you through a couple of examples of how I do this

step-by-step. I will be demonstrating the “Isolate-and-

blend” method described above.

Setting up I usually like to arrive at my destination around sunset so

that I can scout the location while there is light and have

plenty of time to set up. Also I find that sometimes the

base image I want to capture will occur at dusk when the

sky puts on some subtle blues and purples. The most

important thing is to get your composition and focus

absolutely nailed during the set-up. Really study your

LCD to be sure that you are happy with your

composition. Now is the time to make fine adjustments

(horizon level, tripod height, nice foreground, clean

edges of frame etc.). Once you make your composition

choice, you have to lock off your tripod and not touch it

for the remainder of the capture sequence.

Make sure that your tripod is stable and will not wiggle

around as you adjust your camera controls. Also make

sure that you have your cable release securely screwed in

to your camera body, your lens is clean etc. Here are the

checks that I go through before setting up a new shot. I

call this my “pre-flight check” because I now do this

check at the start of every shoot. It ensures that my

camera is in a neutral state. Some of these checks may

not apply to your camera. I first work across the top of

my Nikon from left to right.

§ Quality – Set to RAW

§ WB – Set to Automatic (not really important if

shooting RAW)

§ ISO – Set to ISO 200 (native for my camera)

§ Mode – Set to Manual

§ Exposure compensation – set to neutral (no EV bias)


Then I work down the back

§ Metering mode – set to matrix metering

§ Focus mode – set to single point

§ Picture mode – set to landscape (Picture modes are

Nikon’s settings for in-camera image processing, they

affect the way the image is processed in JPEG

processing but also for LCD previews. They don’t

exist on all Nikons, So don’t worry if you don’t have

a Picture mode equivalent on your camera)

Finally I work down the front

§ Bracketing turned off (I have assigned it to my

programmable key on the front of my camera)

§ Focus – set to manual (for night work)

§ Lens – Clean and ready to go


The base exposure I calculate the exposure for a base image using the

techniques described in

Estimating Exposure Method # 1 – High ISO test shots on

Page 23

Remember to ensure that you are using your histogram

to evaluate correct exposure and not the brightness of

your LCD. With the base exposure I generally under-

expose by 0.5 – 1 stop.

Once you have a good solid base exposure then you can

get ready for the selective light painting.

Selective lighting Now you need to adjust your cameras shutter speed for

the selective light painting. I will typically adjust my

shutter speed down to either 30sec or 60sec for these

shots. The reason for this is that the light painted areas

will be significantly brighter than the background

anyway, so you are exposing for these areas.

This is where you need to start planning your light

painting effects. The creative part of light painting

begins now and it is a good time to talk about light

painting techniques…

Light painting techniques You should start to think about the effect that you would

like to create with your light painting tools. You can

contro a bunch of different parameters when painting.

Here is a summary of just some of the parameters that

you should consider.


§ Light intensity – How long are you going to leave the

light on for… how bright do you want the subject to

be illuminated?

§ Light quality – which light source are you going to

use? (fluoro, focused LED, flash gun etc.)

§ Light colour – are you going to put a coloured gel on

the light?

§ Light direction – What angle do you want to paint

from? Where do you want the shadows to be? Do

you want to emphasize textures by painting at

oblique angles?

§ Light Distance - The distance of your light source to

the subject will have an effect on the fall-off of the

light.

§ Effective light size – this is an important one. You

can control the effective size of your light source by

controlling the spread of the beam over the subject.

Often when I am light painting I will wave the light

around in circles as I am walking to create a larger

effective lighting source. This has the effect of

softening the shadows that are being created by your

light. Look at the examples below to get a feel for the

control you have over the shadows you cast.

Light Painting Shadow Control Tests The following four images were taken at night. In each

case the light source was in the same approximate

location and distance from the subject.

This first test shot was illuminated with a single flash

from a Nikon SB600 flash unit held approximately 2 m

from the subject. You can see that you have no real

control of the shadows when using flash as your light

source.

Illuminated with a flash - Note the harsh shadows

In this next image the only thing that I changed was that

I swapped the flash unit with the fluoro light wand. I

kept the position of the light source similar and while my

camera was exposing I just held the fluoro light source in

the one location.


Illuminated with stationary fluoro light

The shadows hare still fairly harsh, but already you can

see a marked difference from the shadows that were cast

by the flashgun.

In this next test shot, I am using the fluoro light again,

from the same location as the previous two tests, but

while the camera is exposing I am moving the fluoro

light around in 30cm circles.

Illuminated with a fluoro light being waved in 30cm circles

Now you can really see the shadows softening up

considerably.

In the final test below I am increasing the size of the

circles (and effectively the size of the light source) by

waving the flouro light in a 1m circle)


Final test, the fluoro is being waved in 1m circles - Notice the soft

shadows

Now you appreciate the amazing control that you have

over your images just with your light sources and

techniques.

Planning your capture sequence is the next step. I

usually look at a scene and think about the different

ways that I want to capture the light painting. This

usually dictates the number of “selective light passes”

that I need to make.

Lets work through a couple of examples so you can see

how this unfolds in reality.


Example 1: Middle Head Bunker

Base exposure of Middle Head Bunker

Light Painting Run # 1 - Highlighting the stairs

The shot to the left was the base exposure I made of an

old fort at Middle Head in Sydney. You can see it is

quite clearly under-exposed by as much as one and half

stops. That was deliberate to create a dark and moody

stage for the image.

As I was setting up my camera, I knew that the steps in

the foreground would create some great contrasting

shadows if I lit these from a low angle. This was going to

be my first selective light painting sequence. Here’s the

result of that light painting. If you look at my shadows

you can work out where I was standing when I

illuminated this scene. I was concentrating on the

shadows on the foreground steps for this shot.


Light Painting Run # 2 - Highlighting the left side of the bunker

Light Painting Run # 3 - Using Flash to highlight the interior

When I looked at the structure itself I thought I’d like to

have the left wall brightly lit while the right wall was in

deep shadow. Lighting from the back left was going to

be my second selective light painting pass. If you look at

the shot to the left you can see where I was standing in

the top left of frame and waving my light wand around.

Because I’m only going to use the light that is falling

around the bunker it doesn’t matter if I’m in frame

because I will be masked out (you will see how to do this

when we do the post processing).

The next creative lighting decision I made was to

illuminate the inside of the bunker. I went around the

back of the bunker and let of a clear flashgun inside the

structure. I wasn’t worried about creating a soft light,

that’s why I chose a flash unit to “pop” the inside of the

building.


Light Painting Run # 4 - Pink Coloured gels in the interior

Light Painting Run # 5 - Light Painting the roof

I was shooting with a couple of others and we decided to

have a bit of fun with colour, so we illuminated the

inside with a flash unit covered by a pink gel. This was

my fourth selective light painting pass.

Finally one of my colleagues pointed out the beautiful

rusting roof overhang of the bunker, so we lit this up

with a surefire torch. You can see the light of the torch

under the roof as we waved it around. This was our fifth

and final light painting pass.

We blended these images together to create the finished

image that you see on the next page.


Middle Head Bunker - Final Image By Brent Pearson


Example 2: Malabar Head Bunker

While this is also an old bunker, the techniques we used

for this shot were quite different.

Here’s the base exposure showing you the expanse of

foreground that need to be painted and the bunker in the

distance.

I decided to paint the foreground in a series of passes

that went from left to right (almost as if I was mowing

the lawn).

You can see from my captures that I am swirling the light

source around to soften the shadows on the rocks

slightly. This foreground light painting was done in

about 4 passes.


The images on the left continue to show the various

passes I was making to illuminate the vast expanse of the

foreground.

While my light can be clearly seen in the shots, I’m not

too bothered by it as I will be masking this out in the post

production.

If I wanted to keep my light invisible, this could have

been achieved by using some card or fabric to block the

light from the camera.


I then painted each wall of the bunker in separate passes

(this makes it easier to control the intensity in post

processing as well as allowing you to optimize the

textures in each wall through separate light direction)

Finally I used coloured gels and flashes to illuminate the

interior of the bunker.


In this example I didn’t end up using any of the base

exposure because the light painting that we did

essentially encompassed the entire image. However if I

wanted to soften the light painting effect on the

foreground I would have blended back some of the

unpainted rock.

That is the capture process step-by-step. In the next

section I’ll walk you through a detailed workflow for

processing the images.

Malabar Bunker Final Image By Brent Pearson


Post Processing Post processing can be a tricky subject to cover for a

variety of reasons:

1) People use different tools

2) People’s level of proficiency with the tools is vastly

different

I am going to describe my workflow in reasonable detail.

I normally use the following tools Lightroom, Nikon

Capture NX2 (for RAW conversion) and Photoshop for

the majority of my processing. In order to streamline the

workflow I will use Lightroom for RAW conversion in

the following examples.

RAW conversion Once you have bought your images into lightroom, I

normally process the base image by itself. Usually the

source of light for the base image is moonlight or

ambient light. A few points to note about the RAW

conversion of night images.

§ I don’t use noise reduction built into Lightroom, so I

set this to zero

§ I don’t use the sharpening in lightroom so this is also

set to zero.

§ Don’t use any cropping or leveling tools, during your

RAW conversion, you must keep the full frame of

your images.

§ The rest of the RAW processing is pretty standard

When you get to your light painted images I pay

attention to the colour balancing of the light. I try not to

adjust this too much or it will make the blending into the

base image more difficult later on. Once you set the

colour balance for one image, I then “Sync settings” so

that my colour balance settings are pasted across my set

of light painted images. This ensures consistency.

I open all of the images in Photoshop.

Noise Reduction Once I have opened the images in Photoshop, my first

step is to run Picturecode’s Noise Ninja noise reduction

plug-in. This does a tremendous job of reducing the

noise that can be created by long exposure photography.

If you don’t have this plug-in then you will definitely

want to experiment with the noise reduction settings in

your RAW converter.

I also run a pre-sharpening filter at this stage. I use Nik

Software’s Sharpening plug in because I hate mucking

about with sharpening algorithms.

§ More information about Picturecode’s Noise Ninja

§ More information about Nik’s Sharpening plug-in


http://www.niksoftware.com/sharpenerpro/en/entry.php?




Creating your composite image Once I have run noise reduction and pre-sharpened my

images, then the next step is to move them into one

image as separate layers.

Step 1: Arrange your windows

Make sure you can see the various windows of your

images on the screen (you can use the arrange menu item

to ensure they are all displayed on the screen).

Step 2: Shift Drag your light painted images on top of

your base image

Hold down the <shift> key while using the move tool and

drag your light painted images on top of the base image.

Once you have dragged your image onto your base

image, you can now close the files that contained your

painted images. Just leave the layered base image open.


You should be left with your base image open and each

of your light painted images sitting on top in a separate

layer. These layers should automatically be aligned

because you used the <shift> key when you dragged

them onto your base image.

I have included two sample files on the DVD version of

this book to enable you to practice the following

instructions on some of my light painted images. You

will find these files in the sample files folder of the DVD.

If you have purchased this as an eBook, then you can

download the sample files from the following links:

Exercise Files

Middle Head Bunker (no masks) – 5.0 MB

Middle Head Bunker (with masks) – 5.2 MB

Malabar Bunker (no masks) – 5.8 MB

Malabar Bunker (with masks) – 6.1 MB

Note: These files are compressed; you will need to save them to your hard disk and

then unzip them

I suggest you start experimenting with Middle Head

Bunker and then open Malabar Bunker if you want to

different blending challenge. If you want to play with

building your own masks, then download the exercise

file without masks in it. If you would like to see the

finished masks, then download the exercise file that

contains the masks.

Step 3: Build your layer masks

Now layers and masks are either something people “get”

or else it’s gibberish to them. Using layers and masks are

critical for this approach to light painting, I am going to

describe the next few steps in a fair bit of detail to help

novices to masks get the hang of how to make the masks

work for you. If you are experienced with layers and

masks, you can skim over the detail and follow the major

instructions in bold. Layer/Mask “newbies” should read

the instructions in detail.

Click on the little eye next to all layers except the base

layer to turn them off (this makes them invisible). You

should now be “looking through” all the invisible light

painted layers and just looking at the base layer which is

visible at the bottom of the stack. It should be the only

layer with an eye next to in the layer palette.

http://www.nightphotographyguide.com/exercisefiles/middlehead_no_masks.zip



http://www.nightphotographyguide.com/exercisefiles/middlehead_with_masks.zip



http://www.nightphotographyguide.com/exercisefiles/malabar_no_masks.zip



http://www.nightphotographyguide.com/exercisefiles/malabar_with_masks.zip




We are going to go through a sequence that will be

repeated for each light painted layer in your stack

a) Click on the eye icon next to the light painted layer

you are going to work with so that this layer suddenly

becomes visible. If you keep clicking on this eye, it will

toggle between being visible and invisible.

b) Examine the areas of the light painted image and

determine which areas you would like to blend in to

the base layer.

c) We need to add a layer mask to the light painted

layer. While this layer is selected, click on the “layer

mask” icon at the bottom of the layers palette. This

should add a white box to the right of your image icon.

This is your layer mask. It determines which parts of this

layer are visible and which parts are masked out. (white

means this part of the picture is visible, black means it is

being blocked out and grey means it is partially visible

and partially transparent).


d) The mask that you have added is all white by default,

this means you can see all of the light painted image

over the top of your base image.

We are going to swap this around so that it is all black

and makes the light painted layer invisible. With your

new white mask selected, invert the mask by pressing

<Cntrl> + I on the PC or <Command>+I on the Mac. Your

white mask should now have turned all black and your

light painted image has become invisible.

e) Select a large white soft brush To do this first select

the paint brush from the toolbox (or press the B key), and

from the colour palette, make sure that the foreground

colour is white (pressing X will swap foreground and

background colours around, this is a useful shortcut you

will want to remember). To make sure your brush is

reasonably soft (click on the brush preset picker at the

top left of the screen to open the brush preset dialog box

and ensure the hardness is set at zero)

The keyboard shortcuts to adjust brush size are

[ key to make the brush smaller

] key to make the brush larger

These are also very useful shortcuts that you will want to

remember as you will adjust your brush size regularly

when working with masks.


f) Start painting with a white brush over the parts of the

picture that you want to replace with the light painted

version. (It is important to make sure that your mask is

selected and not the picture… otherwise you will paint

over the top of your actual image with white paint). To

ensure your mask is selected make sure that the selection

box is around the black layer mask and not around

picture on the left.

Now start painting with your white brush on the black

mask and you will see the base image being replaced by

your light painted image wherever you paint. You don’t

have to be too accurate here so you can use a larger brush

to paint in more than the section that you want to use.

Now to start tidying it up, press the X key on your

keyboard and you will see that your paintbrush colour

has been swapped from white to black.


This black brush on the layer mask hides your image

(acting like an eraser), so now start “rubbing out” the

parts of the image you don’t want to keep). You can

keep hitting the X key to toggle between painting more

image on and removing the image.

g) Blending in the edges of the mask. If the transition

between the layers is too abrupt, then you can reduce the

opacity of your paintbrush and essentially build up the

transition by painting in layers of grey where you need to

blend the mask from white to black. Personally I use a

Wacom tablet with a pressure sensitive pen to adjust the

opacity of the mask. This makes working with masks a


breeze and I would strongly recommend you invest in a

Wacom tablet for your Photoshop work (not just for light

painting). Using layers and layer masks can be used for

applying most localized adjustments.

To adjust the Opacity of your brush you will see an

Opacity dialog box at the top in your brush options. Try

reducing this to 20%. This means that if you have a

white brush selected and you paint on a black

background, your first pass will lay down 20% of white

and leave 80% of black. If you paint over the top of this

brush stroke again, the density will increase to 40%, a

third stroke will take it up to 60% etc.

h) Adjust the exposure of the light painted image with

curves to improve the blending. Sometimes the

transition of the light painted image is still visible even

after you have feathered the mask. In this case you will

need to use a curve adjustment layer to adjust the

“exposure” of the light painted image only. To do this,

add a curves adjustment layer with a clipping mask.

The clipping mask basically means “apply the

adjustments only to the layer immediately underneath

and not to all the visible layers in the layer stack”. If you

don’t’ apply a clipping mask, then when you make an

adjustment, it will apply to the base image as well as the

light painted layer.

To add a curve adjustment with a clipping layer do one

of the following:


If you have Photoshop CS3 or earlier than hold down the

<Command> key (<Alt> on the PC) while you select

curves adjustment layer from the adjustment layer menu

at the bottom of the layers palette.

When the curves adjustment layer dialog box comes up,

you want to select the check box that asks if you want to

use the previous layer as a clipping mask. This means

that your curve adjustments are not going apply to all

visible layers below it, only to the layer that is directly

under the curve adjustment (in this case your light

painted layer).


If you have Photoshop CS4 then you don’t need to hold

down the <Command> or <Alt> key while you add the

curve adjustment layer. You just add a normal curve

adjustment layer and then click on the “clip to layer” icon

at the bottom of the curves dialog box.

Now you can make adjustments to the light painted

image to make it blend more with the base image. If you

are not familiar with curves, then check out the following

resource, which explains how to use curves to adjust

your image.

Here’ a Youtube video on how to use curves in

Photoshop

Once you have blended your light painted layer in with

your base layer, you go back to a) in this step and repeat

for your next layer. If you have a Wacom tablet you can

typically blend a layer into the base in just a few minutes.

There is one final control at your disposal, which is pretty

powerful, and that is the layer opacity. This controls

how much of your new layer is visible, and how much is

transparent. Once I have blended all my layers into my

base layer, I can then adjust the layer opacity of each

layer and it acts like a dimmer… making the light

painting effect subtler or more pronounced. This gives

you great control over the blending.

http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=understanding+photoshop+curves&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=EHC8SfWkMszzkAXok5nlCw&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title

http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=understanding+photoshop+curves&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=EHC8SfWkMszzkAXok5nlCw&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title


Finishing Up Once you have blended your images together, I

recommend you save this file so that you can go back

and make adjustments on any of the masks that you have

made. Once the file is saved, then I recommend that you

duplicate the image and merge the layers together to

create a new composite background layer. From here on

you will be applying the normal artistic adjustments to

your image as per your normal workflow.

The artistic processing of images is outside the scope of

this eBook, however there are plenty of resources out

there showing you different techniques to get the most

out of your images.


Getting Help

If you are struggling with your night photography or

light painting, then please feel free to drop me a note and

I’ll do my best to help out (within reason). There are

numerous ways to contact me online

Email You can email me at [email protected]

Flickr This is my main online photo hangout; you can find me

and view more of my photos at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brentbat

I have also established a forum specifically for readers of

this eBook on Flickr. If you want to share your

experiences or just hang out with other nocturnal

photographers, then go to the Landscape Light Painting

Group on Flickr

( http://www.flickr.com/groups/nightphotographyguide/

)

DeviantART I also hang out on DA. You can find me at

http://brentbat.deviantart.com

If you are visiting Sydney, drop me a line and perhaps

we can go out for a shoot sometime.

Freephotoguides Also if you haven’t seen the photoguide project, I would

urge you to go and visit http://freephotoguides.com for

lots of great guides to landscape locations.

This site is still very much in its formative stages, but

hopefully it will continue to grow to become a global

resource for photographers. If you would like to help out

with this project, just drop me a line. Some of the sites

are more developed than others. If you want to see what

a well developed site looks like, then check out The

guide to NSW Australia that I am administering.

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brentbat

http://www.flickr.com/groups/nightphotographyguide/



http://brentbat.deviantart.com/

http://freephotoguides.com/

http://freephotoguideaustnsw.blogspot.com/

http://freephotoguideaustnsw.blogspot.com/


Final Words This eBook will have achieved its objective if you are

itching to get out and start shooting at night or

experimenting with light painting. Light painting a

gorgeous landscape is an incredibly fulfilling form of

photography. Not just because of the results you can

achieve, but because of the new levels of creativity that

are at your disposal.

It is like taking the control of a photographic studio out

into the beauty of nature. I hope you have enjoyed

reading this eBook and digesting my learnings.

One final thought to leave you with. Light painting

really is an incredibly unexplored form of photography,

especially the light painting techniques that you can now

use with digital photography. You can get out there and

really discover new styles and techniques in the same

way that I have developed my own techniques and

equipment from experimentation.

I hope you can share some of your learnings and images

with the rest of the readers of this eBook via the Flickr

forum I have created.

Brent

night photography & light painting

Documents