Phos Graphis - Drawing with Light

The word photography is a creation of two Greek words; “phos” meaning light, and “graphis” meaning drawing. So, every time we use the word “photography” we are in fact referring to drawing with light.

While “Normal” photography uses an exposure triangle to capture (or draw) the correct amount of light for a specific scene, I want to talk about another photographic technique called “Drawing with light”, or the more popular name “Painting with Light”.

Painted Tulips

This technique utilises a long exposure (from several seconds up to several minutes) and an external light source to light up the scene. Now, you may think, “so what” flash photography is nothing new, it is used on a daily basis to light up scenes that would normally be too dark to capture in great detail.

I am not referring to flash photography, because the flash will light up the scene, but the act of drawing does not deliberately take place.

For the drawing with light technique, one normally uses a light source such as a torch or a light wand to draw the light in the scene. The basic idea is not to lit up the whole scene, but rather just portions of the scene such as your main subject. The light source on its own may also be the main subject.

I normally distinguish between “painting with light” and “drawing with light” as two separate but similar techniques: They are similar in so far as that they use a long exposure and then a light source to bring detail into the scene, but they differ in so far as the painting with light “paints” (lit up a subject) while the drawing with light uses the light source in the same way one would use a pen or pencil – to draw figures.

Painting with light examples

I have used the painting with light technique with vast scenes, such as the Blockhouse landscape scene and with small scenes such as still life setups. For my landscape scenes, I always carry a small LED Lenser torch in my camera bag (and some coloured cellophane as light modifiers).

For my still life photography, I use a small Maglite torch with a Gun Barrel Optic Fibre Inspection extension to create a very small and defused light source, such as in the Arum Lily and the Painted Tulips.

The two photos below is an example where photographed the same car but with different coloured cellophane in front of the touch to change the mood of the scene.

Steaming Hot

Frosted in Time

Arum Lily

Initially, I planned to talk about the Painting with Light and Drawing with Light techniques in this one post but realised that this post is now getting quite long - longer than most modern people's attention span, so let me stop here...

In the next post, I will show you my Drawing with Light technique - and I have a special plan for that post, so make sure to come back to my blog to read about it.

I have also posted this article on my Weku blog earlier tonight

This is my (rather different) #longexposurephotography post for the week.

Hope you like it