Light painting is a technique that can be done in many ways and forms and is completely experimental with no rules so don't be afraid to try something new to light your images.
There are several different types of light painting.
Flash Gun
The flashgun is what I do most of my light painting with. The flashgun I use is the Canon Speedlite 580ex and it has all the settings that I need to light paint in any situation. This is a top of the range flashgun and not one everyone can afford. I have a back up flashgun which is about 30 years old and still does the same job, the older flashgun settings are a little more tricky than those on a modern flashgun but the job is done the same. The advantage of this flashgun is the infrared cell on the front of the flashgun because it can help focusing at night.
My flashgun has 3 settings with many alterations of each setting.
ETTL - This setting produces a small flash of light and is not very powerful, it can be used repeatedly by pressing the pilot button over and over to light paint. Recycling time is very fast in this mode providing the batteries have life left in them.
M - I call this manual mode and you can choose either full power, half power, quarter power and so on. Using full power helps to light paint large areas inside buildings but does drain more battery power. Recycling time in this mode is time consuming and the lower your battery power the longer the recycling time.
Multi - This is the strobe setting and can be useful for light painting smaller objects that do not need a lot of lighting, a stronger light would lose detail because of over exposing. To use this you just hold down the pilot button and the flash fires until you stop or the charge runs out. You can choose how bright and how fast you would like the strobe. Recycling time can be slower than ETTL because the strobe will go until it has run out of charge then will recycle, depending on how long the strobe is the recycling will take longer shorter. This is not an essential setting as some flashguns will not have it, you can always just use a normal low powered setting and hit the pilot button repeatedly.
This flashgun has a great amount of settings and covers my every need. I would suggest rechargeable batteries for any flashgun or torch because you will soon notice the amount of money you have to spend on AA batteries to feed your light painting tools. Always carry spares also and I would charg up my batteries every time I go out.
Using Your Flashgun For Light Painting
It's not just as simple as strolling in to your frame and start popping flashes everywhere, it has to be carefully considered before you even start your exposure.
Lets take this image for example. It was a clear night with a few small clouds with a full moon so I knew the sky would expose quickly and look nice, When there is a full moon the ground exposes very quickly also. Because it was a clear night on full moon I knew the sky would come out blue, so I chose a contrasting colour for the outside of the truck, as we can see that was Yellow. I then chose a Red for the interior because it contrasted with the Yellow, and the Blue. Obviously I couldn't have a Blue sky with a Blue truck with a Blue interior, it just would notwork.
So you've got your composition, you've got your colours, now you need to have a look inside to see how easy it it to get a flashgun inside or get inside yourself. In this case the outside would be very easy to light, nothing in my way, and I can light it from a few angles. The inside of the truck was falling apart and a lot of stuff was in my way, there is no way I could have climbed in myself, so the plan was for me to go round the right hand side of the truck and lean in flashing my Red gel around covering as much as I could. Another thing I could have done in this situation was used wireless flash triggers and placed my flashgun in places I could not get.
So once I set my camera off on exposure I lit the exterior first, I put on my Yellow gel and I believe I used about 10-15 flashes on a standard ETTL power. Then I switched to my Red gel and walking around the side of the truck and stuck my arm inside the cab and started flashing again I think I used 10-15 flashes. It is important not to get your flashgun head in the shot, if your flashgun can see your camera your camera can see your flashgun, and you will get horrible squares of light in your image, if this does happen you can always clone them out in photoshop or just do it again.
The only problem with light painting inside things, is you have to reach all areas with your light, it will take much more lighting to reach areas further away from your flashgun than those nearest to your flashgun, so when lighting those furthest areas you may get a bit of wash out on the areas closet to you because it has had a bit too much lighting. In some situations there will be 10 different places you can light paint your subject from meaning that burning out should not happen, where as in this case there is only one place I can light from so it will happen. By the time I had done my lighting about 2 minutes had passed and I knew that the sky would have exposed nicely by now so I stopped my exposure and it came out wonderfully.
When you have finished your picture do make sure you zoom in and make sure everything is in focus, no burn out, and flash head in shot, another mistake that can be made is when lighting something at close range the light can reflect off the subject and hit your face which can sometimes be painted in to the image. It's all about trial and error and what works best for you,
White Light
Using the flash gun on it's own with no gels is not used very often but makes the most amazing images.Using a flashgun through a gel slightly diffuses the light where as the white light is pure and powerful. White light is usually used as a balance light on the exterior or something to balance out the interior light painting and help expose the rest of the image without colour.
This image was made with me standing under the plane and using my flash gun on full power a few times to create a white flash of light underneath. There was no other lighting in the image so the rest of the image was exposed naturally by any other available light, which in this case was the moon, if no existing light is available the image would take a lot longer to expose, which is where it would be useful to use exterior lighting. I feel this is a very strong image but very simple as it is just white light.
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Coloured Light
Coloured light is created by holding different coloured gels over the head of the flash gun while it is being fired. Like I just said using gels slightly diffuses the light, doubling over a gel will diffuse the light even further but the colour will be more intense but require more time lighting as it is not a powerful.
This is one of my most famous images and has been published several times. It has also beat 120,000 people to the final of photographer of the year 2008. I created it using a purple gel over my flash gun and flashing the whole inside of the building on full power. Because it was such a huge scale I had to light it for along time on full power or the colour would look faded.
Certain aspects can make light painting hard, like street lighting or even the moon. Sometimes light painting is near impossible. If you are shooting in pure street lighting you will need to light your subject matter enough so the street lights don't washout or paint over your light. If you are exposing for a long time while light painting aspects light the moon or close by street lighting can washout the lighting. You will find these things out by trial and error when you are out shooting and hopefully avoid it all together or find a way to combat it.
Torch Light
I don't use torch light as often because for what I do the flash is much more practical for lighting up large areas, the torch can help us to light up smaller areas with finer detail without over exposing the highlights or the light leaking on to another object. The torch can be used in the same way as a flash gun, on it's own or with a gel held over the end to produce a colour. There are two types of torches which both produce their own colour. A halogen torch produces a very yellow/orange light which can also be found in street lights, most house hold lamps, and most car headlights. (this is why the sky can be orange in some night pictures near city, it's called light pollution) An LED torch produces quite a white/blue colour which can be found on some car headlights, in some household lights. The colour cast will also differ from torch to torch, just a slightly different tone of the colour, which can be good in some situations.
In this image I used a powerful halogen torch to light up this entire castle and two trees in the background. This would not have worked with a small torch, it gives a different effect to the flashgun and takes more accuracy as the lighting can be uneven as you are using the torch a bit like a paint brush.
In this image I used an LED torch to light up the bird skeleton and my flashgun to light the interior of the other room. Because I was using a red gel over the LED torch we can't see the blue cast. If I tried to use a flashgun to light up the bird skeleton with a flashgun it would have most likely painted most of the floor red and not the detail I was after.
Colour Wheel
Light Painting is just about sticking two colours together, you have to think about contrasting colours and complimentary colours and what will work best with your surroundings. A simple colour wheel if you don't know it already will help teach you about contrasting and complimentary colours which should really help you in your light painting.
Here is a basic colour wheel, chose a colour, and the one directly across from it is the complimentary colour of the one you chose. Then contrasting colours are the colours that are very different from each other, Blue and Green are contrasting, Red and Green are complimenting. On location we look at our subject matter (lets say it is a car) and look at what the sky is like, if it is a clear night near no light pollution it will come out mainly Blue especially with a little white balance alteration. So we look on the wheel to see what is contrasting with Blue, Green is very contrasting with Blue so we would use this to light the exterior of the vehicle, then we look on the wheel to see what compliments Green, and Red does, so we would use the Red to light the interior or the vehicle. The final image will come out with a Blue sky, with a green car with red inside and it will be a very visually pleasing image. This may all seem silly but aesthetics are very important when light painting. If we took that same image again of the car, but in a city area so the sky would come out Orange, and we lit the exterior or the car Yellow and the interior Green. None of these colours are contrasting or complimentary they are all in fact very similar and would all sort of blend together and not make a very visually pleasing image. So we have to take in to account, The sky, The light pollution, and the colours we are going to use. Just something else to consider when shooting.
El Wire
El Wire is quite new on the scene but creates some very misty looking effects which can be used in many ways. El Wire actually stands for Electroluminescent Wire and has the glow of a Neon tube but flexibility of a piece of wire. It is often used in car modifications for lining trim, but I think using it for light painting is a much better use. You can create images like this one below.
So you would have seen what El Wire looks like in the equipment section, it is basically a wire with a battery pack attached. When turned on it has 3 settings, constant, pulsing and strobing. In this image I believe I used the constant mode as it also helped me to see as I was walking up and down the stairs. So like me, you find a subject that you want your misty effect on, here I have chose a set of steps and the plan was for the mist to be descending down the steps. So once I chose my composition and focused, I chose my colour of El Wire, now see as the sky was Orange due to a cloudy night and a lot of light pollution, I chose Green El Wire to contrast with the sky, then I mixed this technique with the flashgun technique to light up the rest of the building Blue, which will contrast with the Green and the Orange. So once my exposure begun I started by lighting the building Blue, which was done with a few small flashes on ETTL. I then turned on my El Wire and walked up the stairs waving it around, and then started to walk down the stairs doing the same thing. By the time I had finished lighting the sky outside had burnt in so I stopped my exposure and the image as complete. There is a video tutorial on this technique on the tutorials page.