Light Painting After a Photo Session...

Normally, when the sun goes down and all the golden light is gone I shut down the camera and end a photo session. But sometimes, I use the darkness to my advantage...or at the very least to have some creative fun.

Last night, after using up all the golden light left from the sunset in Malibu Creek State Park, I decided to experiment with some light painting.

Light painting in photography basically involves leaving the shutter open for a specified amount of time and using an external light source to "paint" a scene. It's basically the same technique used to photograph lighting during thunderstorms. In that case, the lightning essentially paints the scene.

Below is one of the photos from last night using this technique.

Here's how it's done...
Now this photo involves a lit bit of trial and error, but here's how we did it. First of all, I set my focus point to the location the model (Grace) was going to stand. I locked the focus there, and then I had a another location from where Grace would draw a "G" using the light from my cell phone.

Grace would utlize both locations to create the image. The difference between the locations is that
I used a slave to fire an AlienBee 800 at the second location once Grace was in place. I did not fire the AlienBee in the location where Grace drew the "G".

So to summarize, I used a 13 second exposure set at F-11. During those 13 seconds Grace drew a "G" in location one. Then I covered the lens with my hand while she moved to the second location, the location with the locked focus. Once she was in place, around the 8 second mark, I fired the AlienBee. I then covered the lens with my hand once again until the shutter closed at the 13 second mark.

Below is another image except Grace drew a heart in this one.

Again, once the sun goes down, it doesn't mean you can't shoot some creative portraits using advanced techniques. Just like everything else in phoography, it takes a lot of practice to get the technique down. -CG

Below are some more images from the session in the evening.