The art of painting with light, or camera painting as it is also known, is not a new technique, but I got to wondering how many of us would consider doing it with our wedding clients?   I had the perfect opportunity at a recent winter wedding, the conditions were great, a little bit of snow, pitch dark, not too much ambient light from the venue windows, and as my friend and fellow photographer Chris Meyer was visiting from the US, there were 2 of us shooting !  Very handy, as this technique is so much easier with 2 of you around.
 
For those of you who aren’t too familiar with the process, I will summarise ... as the title of this suggests, it is literally a technique where you grab a light source, use a long exposure and paint the subject with your light source.  You will need some very basic equipment and a little patience as it can take a while to perfect ... we used a 5D Mark II (you can use any camera provided it is capable of long exposures) with a 16-35II lens, 2 sunpak video lights, a very cold but cool couple and a chair (ok, so a tripod would have been much better but as we didn’t have one, we improvised !). 
 
So now you have the subject and some equipment, here’s what to do ... set the camera to a high aperture, use your light source temporarily to allow you to focus on the subject and get happy with your composition etc, set the exposure (generally around 30 seconds but I have listed the technical data below each image), click the shutter ! 
 
Then comes the fun bit ... you run around with your light source lighting the subject as you see fit, trying as much as possible to remember where you have already lit, so as not to burn out any areas (most important when dealing with white wedding dresses) ... leave the exposure long enough and you could even start with precision “writing” ... it’s all entirely up to you ... just make sure you are out of the frame before the shutter closes (when you’re moving around the camera can’t register you, so try not to stop in one place too long) ... oh, and make sure your clients aren’t moving around at this point either ! 
 
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