9

CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / Light Painting

    ■   Use a smaller aperture so that the depth of

field is deeper, which keeps more of the sub-

ject in the zone of acceptable focus. Then, if

there is any movement, it might not make as

much difference.

    ■   Practice to get an idea of the amount of time

and light needed first, and then have the

model get into the pose.

    ■   Use a pose that is easy to maintain and allow

the subject to rest between shots.

When photographing the scene in Figure 9-13, I

made sure that the subject was comfortable and I

had him angle his head down as I didn’t want to

shine the light directly into his eyes and possibly

cause damage due to the intensity of the light. I

took multiple shots of the same image. I liked this

one the best even though there is a slight blurring

to the head where the model moved.

When photographing people in this manner,

don’t forget to paint some of the light into the

background as well. Because the light can move

through the image, you can also add light behind

the subject without actually lighting the subject.

Just make sure that your subject understands that

this is not an exact method and that it might take

a couple of tries to get it right.

Postproduction and image stacking

The same process that is used to create star trails

from multiple images can be used to combine

multiple images when light painting. The idea is

to take multiple images of the same scene and

combine them into a single image using software.

There are two different ways to combine the

images in postproduction: the first is to use the

different layer blend modes to combine a series of

images, and the second is to use the Image

Statistics script that is built into Adobe

Photoshop Extended.

ABOUT THIS PHOTO This cowboy hat has seen better days, but
it was this characteristic that made me want to photograph it in the first
place. Taken at 29 seconds, f/2.8, and ISO 200.

9-12

PHOTOGRAPHING PEOPLE

Light painting can work really well when it
comes to photographing people, but you need to
make sure you have a model or subject that can
hold still during the actual light painting process,
as any movement when the light is on could
cause the image to look out of focus. There are a
few things that you can do to help this process:

■   Start with the face and move down because it

is the face that usually moves first.