Light Painting Photography Tutorial Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

hi I'm Tony Northrup and I'm here with
Tyler RAM whom you might know as tech
blogger tea or smoothie today we're at
the abandoned seaside asylum in
southeastern Connecticut to do some
light painting now light painting is
exactly like night photography except
while the shutter is open you pull out
flashlights or glow sticks or l-wire or
many other light sources to create
really cool effects so the first thing
we're going to do is break out glow
sticks to simulate Tyler hair being on
fire
this is the red glow stick and when I
wave it around at night it will look a
lot like fire I'm going to need an
exposure time of about two minutes to
get all of Tyler's body covered in these
virtual flames and my camera can only
use a shutter speed up to thirty seconds
so to solve that problem I connected a
remote shutter release now this device
only cost you about sixteen bucks but it
lets you set the shutter for any time
that you want the first thing you want
to do is set your camera to bulb mode
bulb mode just keeps the shutter open as
long as you hold your finger on the
shutter or as long as the shutter timer
tells it to stay open then I'll adjust
the settings on this timer for a shutter
speed of two minutes and I'll give
myself about ten seconds before it opens
the shutter so I can run back by Tyler
you'll notice that's not nighttime yet
I'm starting just before dust to give me
enough light to film this and show you
the techniques then we'll cut forward
and show you the final results that were
shot after dark so with Tyler in
position I'm going to use the glow stick
to simulate fire notice that I'm moving
it around him but keeping it vertical
I'm wiggling it loosely in my hand and
trying to cover every inch of space on
him so that there are no gaps in it also
notice that I'm wearing black and trying
to move constantly if I were to stop
moving for too long then I would appear
in the final shot let's check out the
final result here the direct light from
the glow stick is simulating the fire
the indirect light at that's main cast
off of it is bouncing off the brick
walls and filling it in with cool orange
light
so this is glow wire also known as
electroluminescent wire or just L wire
what you can do with this is wave it
about at night and create a very gentle
kind of bluish glow so what we're going
to do now is separate a little bit and
then shake it around and as you'll see
from this finished result it creates a
very kind of electric look almost like
fog
you
so this is steel wool steel wool ignites
into a flurry of sparks when you light
it on fire so to control it like this
which will do is you'll take some steel
wool and cram it into a whisk you want
to use zero double zero triple zero or
quadruple zero style steel wool then you
can attach a cord to this end of it to
allow you to swing it at arm's length
like this you've got to be really
careful with this though because you're
dealing with fire it's throwing sparks
everywhere now the ground here is very
wet because it's just been raining and
we have a fire extinguisher off-camera
in case anything went wrong always have
somebody else watching for little sparks
that go and then after you're done I
want you to wait like 10-15 minutes just
to make sure nothing lights on fire so
check out the finished result now in
this picture besides lighting the steel
wool we also lit the building with
flashlights the building would have been
too dark to balance the bright light
from the steel wool otherwise all we did
was we took a flashlight and shined it
on the walls behind us
for light painting what you want is a
flashlight that has an instant-on button
so you don't have to push and wait this
allows you to start a movement turn it
on and then end the movement and one
smooth motion
my favorite flashlight is a LED Lenser
p7 it cost me about 70 bucks and it's
200 lumens what do you have there ty
it's a Coast brand one and it's about
two hundred movements do ya so it also
is nice if they have just a single LED
inside of it because many of them have
like three separate LEDs and that shows
up weird with light painting so you can
use this either for direct drawing when
you're facing the camera or just to fill
in shadows I took this photo of a whale
tail in New London and I didn't like the
fact that the edges of the whale tail
weren't highlighted very well so I just
took my flashlight and used it to
illuminate the edges of it while the
shutter was open that was a 30 second
exposure I hope you enjoyed the video we
did this for chapter 10 night
photography in my book stunning digital
photography which you can get in print
or eBook formats from Amazon if you
liked this video you should subscribe to
the YouTube channel see you later