Lighting How To

Brian Hart considers himself a “light artist” who uses a camera and a light source as his pen and paper. The following video is an informal tutorial that will guide you toward creating some dynamic light drawings of your own.

Commercial photographer J.P. Morgan has over two decades of studio experience, as well as a knack for helping others shoot like a pro. In the video below, Morgan uses his unique teaching style to help you better understand lighting by photographing a ball, cube, and cylinder in one properly lit image.

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?

Joe McNally learned the value of supplementing available light with flash early on in his career as a photojournalist. Currently a Nikon Ambassador who works mainly as a commercial/editorial portrait photographer, McNally has become a staunch advocate for the use of Nikon Speedlights on location, often using these small flashes off camera in multiple lighting setups. McNally even mixes his Speedlights with studio strobes on occasion when the situation warrants.

Studio lighting hardware is going through the biggest change—a paradigm shift, really—since the flashbulb was invented in 1929. There are many trends and fads with LED’s popularity seemingly having equal parts of both. LED lighting also appeals to DSLR and mirrorless camera shooters who want to capture stills and video.

Profoto B1 lights are the first studio lights to feature built-in TTL. They also have their own battery and controller so you can go on location and just pop up a light and start shooting. As of this writing they are available only for Canon, but by the time you read this the Nikon version should be available as well. To me, this is tailor-made for location shooting, so that’s where I did my tests.