Tips For Taking Images At Night And Shooting Light Paintings

On this Olympus video photographer Alex McClure takes his Olympus camera and goes shooting images at night and shows how to do some light paintings.

McClure looks briefly at some night photography and moves straight away to some light painting, both using a flashlight on some trees and some kids moving some sparklers. Writing with light in this way is a matter of trial and error start with an exposure of 4 seconds at f/4 with basic ISO an play with it from there depending on the amount of light that you have.

In the second part McClure shoots some steel wool (be careful if you do that, you can accidentally light a fire which can very easily spread out). Using rotating burning wool creates an amazing effect – just be sure to have the wool in the correct place in terms of composition and have the center of the wool where you want it.

Here on Lensvid we have an entire section devoted to light painting which is in our view one of the coolest photography genres.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.