Table Of ContentNight Photography & Light Painting
Tricks, tips and secrets to improve your night photography
By Brent Pearson
Determining sunrise and sunset tim es 27
Table of Contents Ideal time to photograph at nig ht 30
Different Types of Night Photograp hy 31
Photographing Light s 31
Introduction 4
Photographing Landscapes 32
Foreword from the author 5
Startrails 34
A Logical Progression 7
Software for Post Processing Startra ils 35
The Buzz of Light Painting 8
Processing Your Night Images 36
The Different Types of Lightpainting 9
A Photographer Who Does Some Beautiful Light Painting 10 Part 2: Light Paintin g 37
Security 11 Equipment 39
Light source s 40
Part 1 - Night Photograph y 12
My Journey of Experimentatio n 40
The Camera 13
Building a light wand 48
Tripod 13
What you need to bu y 48
Cable release 13
Assembling the Light Wan d 50
Torch 14
Other lighting Source s 54
Spare Camera Batter y 15
Light Painting technique s 56
Accessories 15
Light Painting Method # 1: A-ilnl -camera 56
What You Need to Know 16
Light Painting Method # 2: Isola-taend-blend 57
Familiarity with your camer a 16
Light Painting Ste-pby-step 59
Turning Off Long Exposure Noise Reducti on 17
Setting up 59
F-stops and understanding exposu re 18
The base exposur e 61
How to read your camera histogra m 19
Selective lightin g 61
The Challenges of Night Photograp hy 21
Light painting technique s 61
Challenge # 1– Navigating in the dar k 21
Example 1: Middle Head Bunk er 65
Challenge # 2- Composing your sho t 22
Example 2: Malabar Hea dBunker 69
Challenge # 3– Focusing 22
Post Processing 73
Challenge # 4- Calculating your Exposur e 22
RAW conversion 73
Calculating your exposure at nig ht 23
Noise Reduction 73
Noise and Night Photograpyh 23
Creating your composite imag e 74
Estimating Exposure Method # –1 H igh ISO test shot s24
Finishing Up 83
Estimating Night Exposures Method #– 2 P ocket Char 2t 6
Planning Night Shoot s 27 Getting Help 84
Understanding the ambient lig ht 27 Final Words 85
© Brent Pearson 2009 Page 2
© Brent Pearson 2009 Page 3
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 wit h 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.
© Brent Pearson 2009 Page 4
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. Newport Pool At Night By Brent Pearson
Enjoy
Brent
© Brent Pearson 2009 Page 5
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
forwar d 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
© Brent Pearson 2009 Page 6
As I started to understand the ins -and-outs of night
A Logical Progression photography my results started becoming more
My photography went through a logical progression. I consistent as opposed to hit-and-miss. After a while I
have always been attracted to landscape and seascape found myself starting to experiment with some crude
photography. light painting using hand-held torches. While I was
highly dissatisfied with my own early light painting
As I started taking more and more seascapes, I started tests, I started researching other photographers who
enjoying the abstraction that long exposure photography were specializing in light painting and night
delivers to a seascape image. All of the detail in the photography and started studying their image s for clues
water becomes blurred, clouds full of detail also blur into on their techniques.
subtle background canvases… and what you are left with
is detail around whatever your point of interest is… I quickly realized that there was not much published
whether that is rocks, a jetty, sand, etc. information in one source that would accelerate my
learning. There was a lot of information scattered
I started enjoying this long exposure photography, and in around about light painting with film and simple light
my desire to do more it, I found myself photographing sources, but I couldn’t find anything that really showed
earlier and earlier in the morning before sunrise. It me how to approach the subject using modern lights or
didn’t take me long to wake up to the fact that I was digital processing techniques.
essentially now shooting at night and that if I started
going out later rather than getting up earlier I would After studying quite a number of photographers, the one
have a lot more time to shoot (and more time to sleep). thing I really learned was that the quality of the light that
you use to paint your landscape scenes dramatically
I found the step into night photography to be quite impacted the finished result. The only information that I
daunting for a number of reasons (see The Challenges of could find referred to either camera flash units or hand -
Night Photography on Page 23 for some of the reasons held torches. So in the absence of studying other
why). I was in hindsight incredibly lucky on my first people’s learnings, I pretty much had to start doing my
night photography outing. The sky was absolutely experimentation with different light sources.
perfect for long exposure photography and I ended up It didn’t take me long to become entranced with the
with some rather crude but none -the-less exciting images creative possibilities of light painting, and the fact that it
that got me hooked straight away. was pretty much unchartered territory.
© Brent Pearson 2009 Page 7
The Buzz of Light Painting § It’s experimental – this is not a definitive guide to
For me light painting is exciting for a number of reasons; light painting, this e -book just represents my body of
knowledge for you to build upon. I hope you can all
§ It’s a definite photographic niche that really has not
build upon my knowledge and together we can
been explored.
really push this genre of phot ography to a new level.
§ Light painting offers the photographer a whole new
level of control on their images…. It’s a bit like taking
the control of studio photogr aphy outdoors.
Malabar Bunker # 2 By Brent Pearson
© Brent Pearson 2009 Page 8
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.
Dance By Toby Keller (aka Burnblue)
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.
© Brent Pearson 2009 Page 9
A Photographer Who Do es
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
© Brent Pearson 2009 Page 10
