Painting with Light, Still Life

Recently I've been taking pictures of random things around my house (including my roommate).  Most people do this during the day (those who are photographers with nothing else to do) but I like to do so at night.  The images in this post were all taken using this flashlight:

This is my Pelican 1960, which is a small LED light that is waterproof.  It only puts out 24 lumens (the current way light output is measured) so I have to hold it very close to the subject.  I like this light because of how small it is and that it is waterproof, but I really like it for this application because it is black.  This flashlight would have to hold very still to be seen in an image because the black absorbs nearly all the light.  Thus, as long as I point it away from the lens and keep moving it, it is invisible.  

Painting with light involves pointing a light source at your subject and moving it around, much like painting.  The more you focus the light at a certain part, the brighter that part is.  The more light on an object (or person) the sharper that image is.  For this Chinese Button Knot I moved the light around the actual knot a couple times but went along the tail into the background only once and very quickly. I tried it a couple times to try and keep the knot from being terribly over-exposed.  

Because the beam is pretty narrow, it creates points on the page of this journal (of sorts) that are brighter than others, really a very textured light.  I have a remote for my camera and use a tripod with the camera on bulb.  Bulb means that the camera is on for as long as you hold the button down.  When I use the remote the camera functions a little differently.  I can push the remote button once to start the exposure, move my light around, and push it again to end the exposure, exposing for exactly the amount of time that I want to. There was more stuff behind these knots, shirt, and sock but I easily eliminated it from the image by just not shining the flashlight back there.

It was easy for my roommate, Kyle, to hold still for this image because he was engrossed in his phone:

Obviously one downside to this type of lighting is that any subject has to be perfectly still.  Clearly Kyle's hand is a bit blurry because he was actively using his phone.  It also has to be quite dark to do it, as you can see in the deep darkness of these images.

I hope you've learned something about painting with light and some of how it can be employed.  You can still try it with a camera that doesn't have bulb, you just have to guess the time.  Take some cool pictures!