Painting With Light, a la Jackson Pollock

Nadal Abstracts, #16, Montblanc, Catalunya, 2020

The Traditional Method

Typically, when painting with light, you might do something like this:

–You pick an appropriate night shooting location–maybe near an odd geologic formation, by an old rusty truck, or beside an ancient barn, for example.

–You frame the desired image area with your camera on a tripod.

–Then you set a long shutter speed. Anywhere from, say, 1/4 second to multiple seconds.

–With the shutter open, you use a small flashlight, penlight, or headlamp to “paint” light onto the surface being photographed.

–Then, repeat the process as often as required to get the effect you want.

The results can be impressive as you can see from a simple Google Images search.

For a more detailed lesson, try this Digital Photography School blog post.

Another Way

There is an alternative to the traditional method, though.

Instead of you painting the light onto the object, you can aim the camera–with a longer shutter speed set–at something already lit, then move the camera around while the shutter has its eyeball wide open.

You can try moving the camera rapidly, slowly, randomly, in circles, in squares, up-and-down, side-to-side, or any combination thereof. Lather, rinse, and repeat until you get the museum-quality abstract you want. Try different combinations of light formations and/or colors, and different shutter speeds, too.

I liken this to being a sort of electronic Jackson Pollock… but throwing electrons onto a sensor rather than paint onto a canvas. (Hey, you might get rich! From Wikipedia: “In 2016 [2015?], Pollock’s painting titled Number 17A was reported to have fetched US $200 million in a private purchase.”)

When picking out your best from the several hundred candy-colored candidates you have on your memory card, keep in mind that mere randomness isn’t quite enough. Try to make, and eventually select, images that present some sort of bizarre-unique pattern, that evoke a particular emotion, that are subtly symbolic or anthropomorphic, or that provoke some sort of personal hallucinatory vision into the injustice and existential anguish of the human condition.

Or… just pick the ones you think are rad.

Some recent examples…

The location of this shoot was the small town of Montblanc, Tarragona, Catalunya, using their Christmas decorations around the main plaza. You might even vaguely recognize a Christmas tree with a star on top in one photograph: