Lighting How To

You may have used a beauty dish in the studio. Here’s a very portable model that you’ll find hard to leave at home. It’s quite affordable, too.

One of the first techniques I learned in photography was to use long exposures at night to blur traffic lights. I liked it decades ago, and I still enjoy seeing artful streaks of light superimposed over an urban environment. You never know exactly what the resulting images will look like, and that’s part of the fun. When the background happens to striking, like the Walt Disney Theater in Los Angeles, California (#1), the combination of abstract lights and architecture makes a winning photograph.

“I have a mantra that I live by,” states San Diego-based Tim Tadder. “I believe that I work with the best clients in the world, and that they demand the best out of me. If the job calls for equipment I don’t have, I’ll make sure that I have it available so that I’m delivering the best product I can.”

The intriguing thing about lightpainting is you never know exactly what you’re going to get. And whatever you get, you won’t get it again. That’s part of the technique’s appeal: you’re creating a one-of-a-kind photograph.

Simply, a lightpainting photo is an image made with a handheld, constant light source in a dark room or environment. The camera’s sensor captures only what you choose to illuminate. Lightpainting images can range from relatively simple to fairly complicated. Striking photos can be created indoors with nothing more than a still life subject, a tabletop to put it on, and a small LED penlight to light it. Or you can think big: how about a mega-powerful spotlight illuminating prairie land in the Grand Tetons or a mesa in Monument Valley?

I don’t have to light up rooms or freeze fast action very often—travel photography doesn’t usually call for that, and, besides, I really prefer to shoot in natural light. Fortunately, most of the time I can, but there are instances when a flash will make the difference in a picture by narrowing the scene’s contrast range, making it possible for the camera’s sensor to capture the details in shadow and highlight areas. Often flash is the only way for me to make a picture, as I don’t have the luxury of coming back when the light is better.

Photography is all about light. But wherever there's light, there are shadows lurking nearby. And therein lie some great photo ops.

Exposing Shadows
Contrasty shadow scenes can fool reflected light meters, such as those built into cameras. A spot meter enables you to meter the most important highlight area, and determine an exposure that will give...