If you’ve ever tried light painting for Milky Way photography, you may have run into some frustrating issues. Maybe your light’s color temperature didn’t match the scene, or the shadows and highlights somehow looked artificial. Or, perhaps you got a spotlight effect that didn’t cover a wide enough area.
I have to admit that I didn’t expect to be writing an article about light painting this year. My past attempts with it have always run into the issues I just mentioned – with the end result being photos that looked fake and artificial, distracting from the scene rather than adding to it. The only “light painting” that I would do with any regularity was to wait for the moon to rise and illuminate the landscape!
But seeing some amazing light-painted Milky Way photos from other photographers, it was clear that the issue was with my skills, not the technique of light painting in general. It’s been on my list for a while to improve those skills and add light painting to my repertoire. While I certainly haven’t mastered it yet, I did pick up a huge tip that improved the quality of my light painting tenfold. I’d like to share it with you today.
The problems that I kept running into – incorrect color temperature, harsh shadows, and a spotlight effect – were all things I knew I could fix with fancy lighting equipment like gels and a giant softbox. But I have no desire to lug kit like that into the field, especially when I’m doing Milky Way photography in the backcountry. Usually, I don’t carry any special lighting gear apart from my headlamp and the LED on my phone, which are hardly ideal for light painting.
The tip that I’ll share today changes that. All the photos taken in this article were painted using the basic flashlight on my phone, no light modifiers or other gear required. It’s simple: Don’t point your light directly at what you’re photographing. Instead, paint in the opposite direction, and allow the landscape to subtly reflect its colors onto your subject.
I’m sure that’s a very basic tip that veteran light painters already know, but it marked a major improvement for me. When I went to Escalante earlier this year to test a pair of Milky Way lenses (the Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM and the Sigma 14mm f/1.4 Art), I found that this tip let me take better light-painted photos than I had ever captured before.
The idea is simple. Rather than shining the low-quality light from your phone onto the subject, why not turn the entire landscape into a giant reflector? It improves the color temperature and softness of the light, while also illuminating a greater area.
Here’s a comparison between shining my phone directly at the subject, versus shining it behind me to allow the landscape to provide a reflected source of light:
It’s a major difference! The colors, shadows, and overall quality of the light are substantially better in the second photo.
What’s more, this technique is very flexible and can give you different results depending upon where outside the frame you shine your flashlight. I found that when I aimed my flashlight at a large region behind me to the right, it acted like a giant softbox from that direction:
Alternatively, I could get a more focused effect by walking forward and pointing the phone’s flashlight at a smaller section of the landscape out of frame to the left of the subject:
It’s all down to the type of look that you’re trying to capture. The farther back you stand (and the bigger area of the landscape that you illuminate behind you), the larger and softer the light will appear in the final photo.
You could illuminate some pretty large scenes quite softly with this method. I can imagine shining a bright flashlight toward a tall hill or mountain behind your camera, allowing it to act as a massive reflector to illuminate the entire scene that you’re photographing. There are endless possibilities.
My ambitions at Escalante weren’t that grand, but I was happy to see a significant improvement over my previous light painting attempts. Granted, the landscape that I was photographing had the benefit of many different rocks, trees, and other features to act as reflectors. If you’re at a flat landscape with nothing behind the camera, I’m sure it would be less effective.
I hope that you find this tip useful for your own light painting endeavors!