Painting with Light
Over the weekend, James and I got together again to photograph that rock and a few other things with the plan of finalizing the rock sometime next weekend.
Not wanting to get into the trouble of setting up studio lights, especially for a small little rock, I decided to show James an alternative lighting method: the flashlight.
It’s actually quite the simple technique and one made quite easier with the instant gratification of digital cameras — though I do miss shooting a whole roll of film and having no idea what you got, if anything, until the film was developed. Those were the days. The method involves a long exposure (we were anywhere between 15 and 120 seconds), a completely dark room and using a flashlight to pick out little highlights. Then repeat until you get something you like. The first sample really shows how unpredictable and random it is while the second picture is a bit overlit and just looks like a normal shot. Sadly, my little maglight broke so I’ll have to invest in a new one before trying this again.
Also helps to get some black construction paper to form a small cone to help focus the light to a tiny point. Excellent for picking out those little highlights and details.
The technical terms for this are “hosing” and “painting with light”. Personally, I prefer the latter term over the former.
April 21, 2009 at 4:20 pm | Theory1 Comment »
Nice. Amazing technique. Incredible how little light the camera needs to register a great image.