Want to walk through your own night picture while remaining invisible? This will be a great superpower for light painting. This night photographers do it all the time. And this Photoshop is not magic. It is a simple trick for light painting that works with long exposure night photography that will take your night photography to the next level.
Superpower
You do not have to be mutant to become invisible. You do not need X-Gy. None of them. Through the magic of long exposure night photography, you can walk in front of your camera while your camera shutter is open and never appears in the photo! How is this even possible?
Scientist
1. Movement makes an invisibility
Your camera sensor creates your image over time. It is collecting light, after all. If you still do not stand for a long time, or do not burn enough to register, you never “exist” for the camera. cool huh?
There is an example here. If you take a picture of a person standing towards the shooting of a gun on a target during the day, you will not expect to show the bullet in your photo, will you do? no way. It is traveling very fast. And so this long exposure is with night photos.
If you are making a night picture, it is a long performance by nature. This is dark, after all! It takes some time to register that dim light – perhaps 15 seconds, 30 seconds, or even several minutes or hours, depending on your shot. So in the same way when you are not going to take a picture of a bullet during the day, you too are not going to fly a bird or walk yourself at night. You are moving very fast. And there is not enough light anyway.
Generally, you must stand in one place for at least ten percent of the total exposure time to start showing you in the photo. And yet, you will start showing as an unconscious dark smoke, barely noticeable in the photo. For a full moon photo with a two -minute exposure, ten percent is a full 12 seconds. And even for a “quick” 15-second picture, it is 1.5 seconds! Just keep walking!
2.) You are not just bright enough (and this is a good thing!)
You are undoubtedly going a beautiful, bright. Perhaps you have been told that your cycles shine bright and strong. But most likely, you still do not take enough glow to show easily if you are walking through the scene in your long exposure night photo.
In fact, if you are doing light painting with your night photography, you are undoubtedly wearing dark clothes.
Even if you are moving forward, still not standing.
You are in ghost mode.
How light painters use it for their benefits
This light is one of the best allowances of painting subjects: you can walk physically through your shot without being in your shot. Want to illuminate the distant wall of a abandoned barn? No problem. Walk through the open time of the shutter. As long as you do not stand in a ray of light for a very long time or shine your flashlight on yourself, you will remain invisible.
This means that you can “paint” from several angles during an exposure – by adding side lighting, backlighting, even by adding a pop of color gel – without the need to clones yourself to the photoshop. Think of all light possibilities …
By the way, I almost always paint the photo during the same exposure. It is more fun like this. And I also like that I want to go to the field as close as possible. In this way, my post-processing is mostly about aesthetics, such as danoizing, color correction, sharping, contrast, and other specific procedures-all kinds of almost all types of adjustment photographers have been making in their dark for decades.
When you can appear in your photo
If you do the following while taking your picture, then the superpower of your invisibility can disappear:
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Wear light or reflective clothes
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Mark a flashlight on yourself by mistake
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Stand at one place for more than ten percent of your photo
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Burn with another light source (eg your light, street lamps, or passing cars)
Nevertheless, you are likely to “register” as a strange ghost drop. Sometimes, night photographers do this for the purpose of creating a ghostly, other effects. They can deliberately brighten a flashlight on themselves or stand for a long time part of the exposure, look very spectral and terrible.
final thoughts
When light painting, dark dress. Some light drawing photographers wear clothes almost like ninja, covering their face and hands so that their lights do not reflect their skin so much. In fact, many of us who do light paintings will take specific measures to ensure that the light does not reflect with our face or hands. And of course, we ensure that we never brighten the light in the camera directly (unless we want, obviously).
The function of light painting themes is a performance, a technique. A part of that performance is about continuous movement, deliberate control of light, and selectively blocking or revealing parts of the scene.
This is the time when you start a ghost mode. Take that superpower of invisibility to your night photography to new heights.
