Painting with light

The technique of painting with light in photography involves a flashlight of some sort and the shutter on the camera left open for the whole duration of the "painting" process. Most people think of light streaks in mid air depicting swirls or geometric shapes. However, the practical application that I'm referring to is to use it to illuminate a tricky subject, or to control and balance the mood with a single flashlight.

Here are two examples of my first attempts at product photography. I used a single flashlight for the first shot in which I momentarily shined the light on both sides of the scene to get it depth.













In the second example, I used the dual colored LED flashlight to paint red and blue tones onto the scene.

I chose to use the painting technique to further control the amount of light in the scene without washing out the backlit displays of the light meter and remote cord pictured.

Exposure was about 15 seconds. Let me know what you think.

In this last shot of the brightly lit tree against the star filled sky, an LED flashlight was used to "paint" it with light. A little too hot, but the effect of panning the flashlight's beam up and down the tree during the few seconds the shutter was left open made for this effect.