Light Painting with Irene

There simply is no more fun way to spend free time on a lazy afternoon than being experimental with photography. And the most entertaining way to be experimental with photography is digital light painting.

Light painting is done by setting the camera to a manual shutter release mode, to allow the photographer to "record" an image exposure for as long as she desires. Because the shutter is recording light for such a stretch of time (4-8 seconds), motion, in a sense, can be captured. The most interesting way to capture the motion or "streak" of motion blur is with a point of light, such as a flashlight, as what Irene and I used today.


The trick is keeping yourself totally still while moving the hand that holds the light source. One little smile or sway will make the subject blurry due to the long shutter exposure. And due to the "time sensitive" nature of the project, if you change your expression from the beginning of your exposure to the end, it would result in a seemingly double exposure of both smile and frown in one photo... but mostly registering as a massive facial blur.

Depending on lighting situations, you can get some very dramatic effects with light painting. Some very intense images can be captured in a pure pitch black room and a few points of light, but even more fun can be had with a daytime dimly lit background and a storybook way to present the light painting.

Irene's best word bubble.

And a smile.

This was supposed to be curly, scribbly long hair.

A nice idea?

Today's photo tutorial with Irene ended with a smashing good time playing around with all we could do with the light painting. Now, conjuring a way to incorporate this uniquely and non-tacky looking in wedding or portrait photography...