Painting With Light

The best experiment I did while out hunting was “Painting with Light.”  Basically, you use a light source such as a flashlight, laser, glow stick, fire, etc. in the dark, you set your camera to a long exposure, and with the shutter open you paint light onto your subject.  That’s the basic idea anyways.  The more light you put on a particular part of the subject, the more lit up it will be in the picture.  In my case, I was using a flashlight on this cool lookin’ tree next to our camp.  I was using 30 second exposures at ISO 100 and f/3.5.  Here is my subject:

I thought a painted tree with a sunset in the back would look cool, but I made the mistake of just sticking to the cameras standard 30 second exposure.  I should have used the bulb exposure mode and cranked down the aperture to let less light in.  The bulb mode allows you to leave the shutter open as long as you want.  Then I could have had 1-2 minutes to paint the tree more thoroughly.  The moon was nearly full that night.  I want to try this again in the complete dark which would allow longer exposure more easily.  Then I wouldn’t have to worry as much about overexposing the other areas of the pictures.
Here are some of my favorites.  I took these ones while standing behind the camera and shining my flashlight at different parts of the tree for different amounts of time.  The first one was taken at f/5.6 before I opened it up to f/3.5.



For these I also moved closer to the tree since the flashlight was pretty weak from too far away.  I also mounted the camera lower to try and get the top of the tree above the horizon line.  Seeing how the light was brighter when closer, I got the idea to run around under the tree and shine my flashlight at a closer range to help make it brighter.  I got my favorite pic when I did that.

Isn’t it cool!  These are all straight out of the camera without any editing.  The squiggly line is my headlamp while I’m running around.  The straight lights in the back are the street lights in Bylas. 
Some other lessons learned are that flashlights have a lot splash.  I found myself using my hand around the tip of the flashlight to try and narrow the beam down and more precisely target the areas I wanted.  I also should have used the Bulb mode for longer exposures and would like to try it all again when there is no moon.  Different colored lights or a mixture of colors and light sizes would be fun to play with too.  Last of all, tell those around you what you are doing.  I could hear the guys at the camp (100 ft away) wondering if I had fallen off my rocker.  It must looked like I was trying to find something in the tree.  Fun! Fun! Fun!