Learn the light painting basics

Light painting is a great way to create mind-blowing images and to learn more about the potential of photography. And since it’s all about playing with light, you can get great effects by spending very little money. You just need a few light sources (torches, light strings, light sabers, etc) and a phone or camera.

Step 1: Set your camera to take a long exposure photo 

Every time you take a photo you’re opening the shutter of your camera and exposing the sensor to light. Light painting is referred to as a kind of long-exposure photography, meaning that the amount of time the sensor is exposed to light is far longer than in regular photography.

You can adjust this using the shutter speed. The shutter speed is the length of time that the shutter stays open when you take a picture. Usually, it’s somewhere between 1/50 to 1/200 of a second – so really quick. When you’re light painting you want to leave your shutter open for a long period of time. In photography terms, a long time could be 1-2 seconds or even more. If you were taking a regular photo, this would create a blurry image, but for light painting it enables us to have the effect we’re looking for.

You can adjust this using the shutter speed. The shutter speed is the length of time that the shutter stays open when you take a picture. Usually, it’s somewhere between 1/50 to 1/200 of a second – so really quick. When you’re light painting you want to leave your shutter open for a long period of time. In photography terms, a long time could be 1-2 seconds or even more. If you were taking a regular photo, this would create a blurry image, but for light painting it enables us to have the effect we’re looking for.

On some iPhones, you can do lots of this by just setting it to night vision. On other cameras, you may have to download an app to give you more control. You will usually have to set your camera to MANUAL settings to be able to do this.

Step 2: Reduce how much light comes into the camera 

Since the exposure is so long, we have to do what we can to limit the amount of light hitting the sensor at each moment. We do this by adjusting the aperture – this is the size of the hole that the light goes through when the shutter is open. The smaller the f-stop, the bigger the hole so the more light hits the sensor. For light painting, you want a small aperture, so you need to set the f-stop to a high number.

Step 3: Make your camera less sensitive to the light 

Cameras are usually extremely sensitive to light – which is how they can capture all the detail of an image in just a tiny fraction of a second. Even at a high f-stop, a long exposure photo will just result in a white image, unless you reduce your camera’s sensitivity. You can do this by adjusting the ISO. This literally adjusts the sensitivity of the sensor, – the lower the number, the less sensitive it is.

Step 4: Make sure your camera doesn’t move 

A long exposure photo on a moving camera creates a big blur. If that’s what you’re looking for, then great, but if you’re looking to create a light painting image then you need to make sure that your camera doesn’t move at all. If you have a tripod then this is the time to use it, but you can also do it by putting your camera on a table and blocking it in with a couple of piles of books, or something else equally heavy.

Step 5: Turn off the lights

Light is the tool you’re using to create shapes and colours in your picture, so you need to cut out any light that you don’t want to be in the picture. So, to prepare for your shoot you need to close the curtains and turn off the lights.

Step 6: Start painting!

By now you should be standing in a pretty dark room, and the screen on your camera should be black. It’s time to start painting! Just press the shutter, draw in the air, and see what happens. For tips on different light painting techniques, check out some of our other resources. 

This four-minute tutorial explains everything you need to know to make a great-looking light painting. The presenter shows how to get the effect on an SLR camera or an iPhone, and teaches an amazing effect you can achieve with a £10 light string. It’s from a photography blog, so if you’re a total beginner to photography there may be a couple of technical terms that can be a little confusing.

Chocolate Films runs workshops in light painting for children and young people. Click here to find out more about our light painting workshops.