Last night, Ashley and I spent over an hour playing around with a tripod, spotlight and a strobe, experimenting with a photo technique called light painting. We were working on making a photo to contribute to a collective photo essay on numbers.

Here are the basic settings used:

Date: 4/4/06
Time: 2:08:31 AM
Model: Canon EOS-1D Mark II N
Lens (mm): 17
ISO: 500
Aperture: 9.0
Shutter: 13
Program: Manual
Focus Mode: AI Servo AF
White Balance: Auto

The camera was mounted on a tripod and an initial exposure was measured. Once I figured out the correct exposure for the ambient light, I then underexposed it by about a stop. Then, I stood in front of the camera holding an off camera strobe to my right. Once Ashley pressed the shutter button, I manually flashed the strobe on myself while Ash used a 1,000,000 candle-watt spotlight to paint a “3” onto the neighbor’s house. After she finished painting, she moved to her position in front of the camera while I quickly ran across the frame so that I was positioned out of sight on the right side of the frame. I used the same off camera strobe to light Ashley and the tree in the background. This all had to be completed in 13 seconds…without waking up the neighbors. It took over 60 tries, but we finally got one that worked.