Painting in photography? You bet! The word “photo” means light in greek and “graphe” means drawing; so we’re just going to take it up a notch and paint instead of draw!
Let’s get down to business, how are we going to do it? You will need to gather a few things first:
- DSLR camera
- Tripod
- Glow sticks or flashlights (or sparklers if you have them available)
- A dark room or night conditions with no street lamps
Now, set your camera onto your tripod and set the camera to manual. You may need to mess with the settings a little to get it looking right, but know that you will need to have a SLOW shutter speed. From there, you will just need to adjust the other settings (aperture and ISO accordingly). The images below were taken in a completely dark room. No light coming from any windows or anything. The settings for the pictures taken here are:
- ISO: 800
- Aperture: f/3.5
- Shutter: 8 seconds
Next, have someone wave the glow stick or flashlight or sparkler around in front of the camera. You can have them try to write something, or make a shape, or just move it in any which way to make it look like an explosion of light! EASY! Right? So go get some glow sticks and paint with light!
If you found this article helpful, click below to download the FREE project outline for Painting with Light.