Posts Tagged ‘Light painting’

With the increased availability of photography editing software and the introduction of new, easier to use compositing tools, 'trick' photos have become much more common. Compositing together photos to create a trick photo is not a new technique though - even in the early 20th century photos would be cut up then stuck together to form a new image.

However, trick photography isn't just compositing photos together to make something new. There are plenty of tricks that can be performed right in camera, with no Photoshop wizardry needed at all.

In this article we'll look at 10 different tricks that can be achieved wholly in-camera but usually work best with some post production editing as well.

Whether photography is a hobby for you, or a career, it's highly like that you take photos because you enjoy it. One of the enjoyable aspects of photography is trying out new techniques, and capturing images that show a different view of reality to that you see with your eyes.

In this article I'll share five techniques that are fun, creative, and can result in some great 'out of this world' photos.

A Physiogram is a photo of the light pattern captured during a long exposure photograph of a swinging light or lights. The effect creates beautiful abstract patterns.

Physiogram by Sylviane Moss on flickr (licensed CC-BY-ND)

There are two main types of light painting photography, both of which involve using small torches or lights. In one type you capture the light coming straight out of the torches, and draw the light in mid-air with the torches. With the other type you shine your torches on your subject, so that only certain parts of it are illuminated.

It is this second type of light painting photography that I will concentrate on this article. By using a small torch, such as an LED torch or maglite, you can paint light onto your subject.

This gives us quite precise control of which parts of our photo are bright, and which parts are in shadow. In case you didn't guess already, painting with light requires a dark room (or you can do it outside at night), and a slow shutter speed.