Painting With Light

Painting with light is a photographic technique I had never heard of before going to De Hoop, South Africa.  De Hoop, a huge nature reserve with an incredible starry sky and an abundance of large trees, is the perfect place to practice.  While the process might seem complicated, a flashlight, tripod, and DSLR camera are the only ingredients necessary for these beautiful photographs.  For this specific photo, I put my camera on a tripod, set the shutter speed to 30 seconds, and opened the aperture to f3.5.  I composed the picture to have a large tree in the bottom third of the photograph and black sky in the top two thirds.  When I pressed the shutter, two people waved large flashlights over the tree, lighting it up for 30 seconds.  The end result was a clear, bright tree beneath a blanket of stars.

This was my favorite shoot from the past month on the FAUP internship.  In my four years of photographic experience before coming to South Africa, I never even knew that photos like these were possible.  Having the ability to create such beautiful and unique pictures from such a simple process feels wonderful.  As an aspiring photographer, I love having the ability to take these kinds of pictures and I look forward to taking more with this technique in the future.  -Grace Ryan