Last weekend, I checked an item off of my bucket list and attended a light painting workshop conducted by Harold Ross. Light painting is a technique where the photographer, working in a dark studio, opens the camera up for a long exposure, and "paints" the light onto the subject primarily using flashlights. The end result is this gorgeous light that reveals more texture, color, and shape and makes your subject almost looks like a painting.

To learn more about about light painting and Harold Ross's work, click here.

I was advised going into the workshop, that it’s not an easy technique to learn. Luckily for me, I never assume anything is going to be easy, a theory borne out by my experiences with Geometry, parallel parking, and wakeboarding. I was prepared to add light painting to the list.

The workshop lasted three days, during which we learned about the technique, set up and light painted our own still-lifes, and then did all of the back-end production work in Photoshop. It was intensive, to say the least, and at times overwhelming. My fellow workshop attendee, likened it to “sucking on a fire-hose” because there was so much information to absorb.

My still life without light painting. Note how bland and awful it looks.

The most challenging part of light painting is that it’s just as much of an artistic process as it is a technical process. You have to have a feel for it. While trying to light our still-lifes, I kept being remind of this scene in Apollo 13, where the crew has to manually readjust the angle of their entry trajectory by a matter of degrees in order to enter the atmosphere safely. If they were too steep, they would burn up, if they were too shallow they would skip off the atmosphere. Watch the scene here.

Similarly in light painting, getting the right angle is critical to the process. I needed to be able to shine and move the light at a certain angle, from a certain distance, at a certain speed, for a certain length of time in order to properly light my subject. If I’m making that sound easy, then I’m not describing it right. Verbal exchanges during each exposure would go something like this:

“Okay, here we go… Open!... Bring her around… you’re drifting!... No, hold what you’ve got…. Come to the right a little bit… Crap, I’m losing it… Back, back! That’s it. Steady. Close!”

And repeat. Light painting happens in a series of exposures/shots that you have to combine into one in Photoshop. For an example, look at my seashell. I had to light the front of the shell in one photograph and the back of the shell in another so that I could get shine the best light on both sides. Now start counting up all of the objects in my still-life, and you’ll begin to get an idea of the scope of what light painting a scene really takes.

So was it intensive?

Yes.

Challenging?

Definitely.

Worth it?

Well, I think the end result speaks for itself, don't you?