This video describes the processes involved in creating these beautiful Fine Art Light Painted Nightscape Images. The old ute was given the treatment and it looks amazing.
You explain this process in an easy to digest way, and your work is visually stunning. I can't wait to experiment with these techniques in my photo and video experiments.
After reading the other comments I would only be repeating what's already been said, very well done. Your insights will raise the quality of my photos ten fold. Many thanks 😊
I stumbled across your channel this morning and I have been binge watching and trying out all of these different methods lol. Finding your videos has been such a great experience. The way you lay this all out is making it so much clearer for me. Thanks again!
Another excellent instructional video. I'm saving all your videos in a separate folder to watch repeatedly. I love that the videos teach you everything from how to find suitable foreground objects to light paint, how to capture the night sky, and how to edit them and blend to make the most of them. It's all delivered in a clear, concise and inspirational way that really makes me want to have a go myself. Thank you so much for this. These are easily the best videos on night photography.
Absolutely love your work ., QUESTION - when u photographed the car in this image , could u please specify where on the car u placed the focus point . Thank you ! You are an incredible inspiration ❤❤❤❤❤❤
Thanks so much for watching Bernie. I shot this car a long time ago, but often these days unless the car is very close I'll keep the focus at infinity. By changing the aperture for the foreground exposure the focal plane widens and brings the subject into focus. If the subject is very close then I'll re-focus onto the front of the car. Hope that helps.
I very much appreciate the time and effort you take to put these extremely informative instructional videos together. I can't wait to go out and put these techniques into practice. Thank you.
I took a beautiful picture of Neowise tonight. I bough the introvelometer like you suggested and used it to help capture some nice pictures. Thanks for your help Richard
Tried to do the light painting this weekend, so hard! I failed in getting decent images and my stacking didn't work out at all! do so enjoy your videos on RU-vid, thank you.
This was a great explanation of light painting, I really appreciate the photoshop layer/mask explanation and seeing layer by layer how much detail is added by the light. Awesome video, your work is beautiful
Great tutorial, I just came from browsing low light tube photography. At first I thought about skipping this one, as I have done painting with light before. Then you hooked me with the pinsharp stars at the back while having to spend time painting-in the subject. The few times I've done painting with light, I always tried to do it in one go. Taking different shots for different angles is actually a brilliant and logic way to do it, as you cut down on noise and you can light the same area of your subject multiple times, giving you more options to combine, especially if you have not refined your painting technique. If you burn out a detail while doing it in one go, it could potentially be the cause of great frustration. Sometimes..., (no correction), ...it's always worthwhile to revisit something you've done in the past, because somewhere out there someone else is doing the same thing with a much better approach! Thank you!
Awesome tutorial, love the way you explain everything in-depth and eloquently. Super enjoyable & very informative. Also amazing images as always. Thanks heaps for sharing a little bit of your workflow for post-processing. 😊🙌👍👏👏👏
Wow ,what a splendid tutorial, it was great to see how the different layers come together to produce your final image. You`re enjoyable to listen to and thanks for sharing your knowledge :). Now I just have to master my LUMIX FZ300 :).
These videos are such a pleasure to watch. Everything is so well explained and the final images are beautiful. Thank you for making these. As an aspiring photographer, these are really helpful. I'm going to try some light painting shots this week.
Really appreciated Mike. I absolutely love my nightscape photography and my desire is to share the passion and determination that's required to get great shots.
Hi Richard, I took the time yesterday to watch all your videos on RU-vid. It's a beautiful job, thank you for your sharing and your explanations very clear. I know the work that it represents, bravo! Olivier from Belgium
Excellent video, thanks a lot for sharing! 😃👍 This technic triggers my imagination to probably solve a problem with an idea for a picture that is sticking in my brain for years now. Again, thank you so much! Subscribed of course! Cheers, Martin
Nightscape Images thank you Richard, I follow you since... 🤔 a year ago? I don’t remember exactly but, for the very first time I saw your videos, I was amazed for your work, and every Friday (here in Peru) I wait to see another video, your videos help me a lot to take some pictures of the Milky Way, composition, technique, light painting etc. I’m very thankful for all your passion and knowledge. By the way my mane is José Luis Chacón and i live in Cusco Peru 🇵🇪 hope one day you’ll come to my country and I’ll be very glad to be your host. Take care and thanks again.
layering is fantastic but as you mentioned is a laborious process in photoshop - what if i do hdr with lightroom, how will be the outcome do you think? excellent work by the way.
Thanks so much for watching. Lightroom doesn't have any ability to remove areas of an image that contains stray light or perhaps stars that shouldn't be there.
I'm so hooked. I love shooting at night, long exposures and macro photography. Your videos have inspired me to put all three together and hopefully with some practice put great pieces of art on my wall. Thanks.
Very inspiring. Looking to take my night photograpy to this level. Just subscribed to your channel. Lots to learn. Thanks for taking the time to show us how. Semper Fly.
Yes , thanks for this. Up till now I would just bang of some flashes in the foreground, with a hope and wish. Sometimes OK sometimes not. I like the idea of the torch and experience with fstop and time to get things right. Also changing the colour temperature from a cold blue sky to warmer in front. Thanks very much
I really appreciate the video. I have been planning to get out and take some nightscape photos, but was not sure how photographers were capturing the fore ground detail. I can see that light painting could have a number of applications. Thanks for the inspiration.
That's is very very nice I've got something very similar in mind. The only problem is there are a lot of old cars. In a line beside a highway. And the background is not very nice. The cars are on small hill. I was thinking of maybe a small light inside the cars. Maybe a foggy night to cover the background. Are should I just pick 1 car? And focus on 1 like this car is coming back alive. I've got a cannon t6i. And to be honest It's been laying around for a year. So I've got to brush up. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Photograph lets me look at the world around me in a different light. Can't wait to try to get shooting done. I got my books but seeing it being done helps more. Thanks again.
Excellent video. I think most people when they hear about light painting think of people doodling with light sources using a long exposure not making such great images like the ones you made.
Nightscape Images What is the technique you used to remove the sky from all but the first image called? Mask brush? I have some Photoshop courses but not sure what to look for.
thank you so much for sharing your process. you give very clear explanations. I am making a start into lightpainting and loving it. I have suscribed to your channel. love your photos.
Great video! Please tell me what luminous flux of the flashlight is necessary for sufficient illumination of objects. For example, cars, trees, small houses?
Thanks a lot for watching Anton. I only use about a 300 lumen torch and many times it isn't at it's brightest setting. The distance to subject and length of time shining the beam as well as the zoom of the beam all come into consideration as well.
Hi , wonderful tutorial.I am just starting out and have a question that may be very obvious to a lot of people but when you are in the dark, would you shine a brighter light onto the subject and focus first and then start painting? And secondly, do you refocus each shot on the area that you are working on? Many thanks and what a wonderful hobby
Thanks heaps for watching little engine. They are great questions. Yes I do use a brighter light onto the subject to ensure good focus, secondly .. no I don't generally need to re-focus for every foreground shot as the focus won't change enough to matter at the settings I've punched into the camera.
@@arunstudiom.v.kuppammaha If you're asking what settings to use with a Nikon D7000 camera, they will be very similar to those I used here. I all depends on the lens you use also.
This is your second video i have watched, i Subscribe on the first video before i finished watching it. I like the way you describe how to do it, and like how you put the numbers up on the screen. I am really enjoying watching your videos and going wow at the final image. Thank you for amazing videos. Look forward to watching more.
Thanks going to scotland in May for a few weeks .ive tried long time exposure usually 20 sec and lighting the fore ground with a torch with not much luck.But if the weather's right I'll have another go i dont won't to edit it on a pc but would like to do it "with in the camera" thanks for the inspiration
Richard... I'm enjoying learning about your technique. I'm puzzled though why the attention to in-camera white balance when you're shooting Raw files and can always change the white balance afterward in edit. Please explain. Thanks.
Thanks so much for watching really appreciate it. I think it's because I don't like to encourage anyone to default to auto settings. You are correct that you can easily adjust the white balance in post production. There are many situations where you want to ensure multiple images have the same look .. eg: Star Trails, Time lapse etc. I prefer to set my white balance and then if need be I can still change it later in post anyway .. If I leave it on auto then my options are more limited and as mentioned I think it's a bad habit for nightscapes. For daylight photography I have no issues with auto white balance.
@@nightscapeimages.richard I will be teaching a light painting workshop to the Boise (Idaho) Camera Club in a couple of weeks. I will base much of the instruction on things I've learned watching your RU-vid videos. We will be using one of the member's cool Harley motorcycle as a subject. Have you done any motorcycles in your work and if so, perhaps you could provide me a link to a shot for inspiration? Thanks... Love your stuff.
@@Truelight54 Thanks again my friend. I haven't done a lot of motorcycles .. certainly not for a long time. There is one image on this page: www.nightscapeimages.com.au/automotive.html
Brilliant ideas. Now I will like more taking shots by night not just for the milky way. One question. When photographing the foreground, you just turned the focusing ring away from the infinity mark. Is that enough to get the foreground in focus in addition to the change in the aperture to f5?
Back in the stone age I used to do this kind of work on film using a Mamiya Super 23. Things were lit with my Norman 200 stobe and I lit the fore ground buy changing the focus. You system sounds complicated but beliueve me its a breeze compared to what I had to do.
First video I watched on painting with light. Great presentation! As I am interested in giving light painting a try, what light source does one recommend. I am sure the answer is already out there, but I just started searching this topic. Very inspiring video! Thank you
Hey. Great vid. But doesn't your lens change the angle a little while refocusing, so that final images become misaligned? Would be nice to see how do you fix it? Via PS -> Auto-align? Thx
Thanks for watching Boris. What you are referring to is Focus Breathing and yes this can be an issue but Auto Align in photoshop won't address that so much. What can happen is that you'll notice a black outline from the unlit layer underneath. I overcome this by trying to make that outline less visible in the final edit. You have to really look for it to actually see it.
This is a great video. One thing that isn't mentioned, though (and is in fact almost never mentioned in these sorts of videos) is the focus breathing which occurs when you change your focal distance on the lens. You're going to wind up with a different image after refocusing from the sky to the car, and given that this is a pretty wide lens (20mm) the distortion along with the change in focal length makes this exceptionally difficult to just use Align-Layers. I'm always curious to hear how people go about mitigating this challenge.
Thanks for watching Philippe. You are absolutely correct regarding the focus breathing. In most images I have not found it to be too much of a problem as the technique of actually lighting the subject tends to mask this slight black shadow from the observer. It is certainly there but in the big picture doesn't detract very much from the overall image. One way to help mitigate this is to ensure that there are actually dark and light areas in the image. Where there are shadows present the dark edge becomes invisible anyway. This is part of the overall technique and as I often mention when lighting ... never light from the same angle as the camera ... side light creates more dark and moody shadows which in turn helps hide the out of focus shadow you are referring to.
Nightscape Images I understand, and really, some of what I was referring to (methods for how you blend layers, masks, alignment) becomes its own tutorial altogether, so I certainly don't fault you or intent and criticism on your workflow. There is always something more to cover, but this is another critical aspect. Anyway, I enjoyed your video and you have a beautiful gallery of work.
Thank you so much Richard. You made a great video here. Inspires me to get out there and get some beautiful night scapes myself. Your work is inspirational and beautiful. Fine art indeed. Blessings to you my Friend, I have subscribed! O:)
Thank you so much on sharing your knowledge. Your description of the workflow was flawless. My only query is what lights did you use for lighting the car? I have been using an LED light and finding it too stark white. Would be interested to learn more about your equipment. Thank you.
Thanks for watching Ciaran. I use an LED Lenser P7.2 torch and cover this with a 1/2 cto gel (Part No 205) The reason I gel the torch is to warm up the typically blue led light from the torches. Also it helps if I cool the white balance of the camera down a bit, which I typically do to make the sky a richer colour with a touch of blue.
Thanks for this and many other of your videos. I discovered your channel recently, being interested in the art of light painting. I have a question, one that may be answered elsewhere but I have not seen it yet. How do you coordinate the start of the exposure period with being in the right location to do the light painting?
Thanks so much for watching Chris. I use a wireless remote shutter release so that I'm already in position when the shutter is triggered. There are many you could use but I love the Yongnuo rf603ii. www.amazon.com.au/Yongnuo-Professional-Flash-Trigger-RF-603/dp/B013E1YF3Y/ref=sr_1_2?adgrpid=122112287995&gclid=CjwKCAiAtouOBhA6EiwA2nLKH3qWAQrFH6vQaEh9LjNSRpwXippszX67EvAHjsDHemPFmP52DsezchoCNygQAvD_BwE&hvadid=516459594710&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9071496&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=13670557097762560292&hvtargid=kwd-296736535111&hydadcr=14732_16212&keywords=yongnuo+rf+603+ii&qid=1640214199&sr=8-2
@@nightscapeimages.richard thanks for the quick response Richard. That was almost too obvious, in hind sight. I have an A7R, so I’ll find an equivalent.
Richard, your work is absolutely fantastic. Congratulations. Thank you for showing us your method of work. I was going to ask you a question, but I saw that my doubt had already been answered in a previous comment. I read each of the messages and answers. I can’t understand how people ask five times the same question. People don’t read? Magnificent work, Sir. Greetings from Uruguay. PS: I forgot another question. How long do you illuminate the subject, in the 20 seconds that each photo lasts?
Hi Richard. My question is about the light painting technique. Do you light paint the foreground subject from a different angle in each foreground shot? And second question: in each foreground exposure do you light paint the foreground subject for the whole duration of the foreground exposure?
Yes George I do light paint each image from a different angle and perspective. I don't always light for the full duration of the shot .. there is some trial and error
Love your work, when you say about light balance, can you also say the type, I.e what k is what type of lighting ie tungsten or florescent, etc, some cameras dont have k ratings for white balance, just what they have. Thank you, love these videos
@@nightscapeimages.richard my nikon d7100 and d3400, have set white balance, rather than k ratings, so I dont always know what you mean when you say what k you are using
A cracking tutorial Sir, it certainly has spurred me on to get on out there and try the technique. Up to now all my night shooting has been of the boring kind :O) Oh and thanks for replying to some of the comments below, not everyone does that and it certainly make a difference, well to me it does. Now where is that subscribe button.
I do really appreciate you taking the time to comment. This style of photography is my passion and I'm always very happy to encourage others when I can.
Great video! Thank you so much for uploading. Do you tend to only use flashlights in your light painting or are there other lights you frequently to use?
Thanks a lot for watching David. I do mostly use the flashlight as it gives me the best control of the spread of light. I do use LED light panels for lighting up larger objects such as trees or buildings sometimes. This is called low level lighting because in those situations I'll leave the light on the the whole duration of the shot at a very low level.
This video should have much more likes. I really enjoyed your video. It was a real pleasure to follow you on your way of how to create this beautiful image. Your explanations were superb! Thats why I immediately subscribed to your channel. Thanks a lot!
Hi Anthony. This type of shot can certainly be achieved with a kit lens. Once you get a good clean background sky image you'll be able to stop down the aperture of the lens and lower the iso which will help the lens immensely. I'm assuming you have a crop sensor camera ...?? But even so you can do this type of shot with any camera and lens combination.
Hello, Richard! I just discovered your channel almost 1 month ago and I've already watched most of your videos, I love the pieces of art you create (of course I've subscribed immediately and follow you in Instagram) thanks for the amazing knowledge you're sharing, I just ordered a torchlight to start practicing your techniques. I have a question: what happens if your camera moves a little bit when you are setting it up for the foreground exposures? Does it ruins the session? Once again, thank you for your art. And happy new year!!
Thanks so much for watching Guillermo, I really appreciate it. Yes it will ruin the image if you move the camera between shots. It's really important to have a good solid tripod and to be careful when handling the camera during the exposures.
Hi Richard, thanks for your inspirational video, and chance to see your stunning images. May I ask if you keep your focal point in the same spot on the car for all the variously lit foreground images, or do you move it for each shot to the area you are lighting? Thanks again!
Thanks Julia, really appreciate your encouragement. Regarding focal point. Once I stop down the aperture I leave the focal point at the same place generally, especially when using wide angle lenses as the focus plane is fairly wide at f5 for example. However if the subject is a longer item going away from the camera I may change it from the closest point to somewhere near the most distant point. Another option in that case is to close the aperture down even further to perhaps f8 and simply add more light. Hopefully that helps.
I’ve learned a lot from your editing techniques, thanks so much for sharing your expertise. One thing I’m having an issue with is when I stack my sky images in Sequator, the output image has a slightly darker sky. So when I blend it with my foreground images I have to mask my foreground subject against the sky image perfectly (which is next to impossible with a tree as the subject). My final image has the 2 different toned skies around the parts of my subject above the horizon. I tried again without the Sequator output with a single sky image blended with my foreground images and it still wasn’t a perfect color match with noise pollution and the blend wasn’t seamless. Not sure if I’m missing a step or if there’s a trick to avoid this?
Thanks for watching Alpha. Blending foregrounds and backgrounds can be very difficult and they almost always need some tweaking to get a match. Each shot will be different and I think the key is to try to get a subtle gradient between the two.
Very interesting! Thanks. One question: Is their an advantage of doing the foreground in multiple layers instead of doing the foreground at base ISO which should give you enough time to move around and paint from different angles (plus image quality). Other then saving time when making a mistake that is. But I guess that you make test shots anyways to gauge the amount of time you need to paint, right?
Great comments Jens. Yes you could certainly do this in one long exposure but as you have hinted at, there is a great possibility of over lighting one of the angles and thereby rendering the whole exposure to the trash can. The other thing is that you then have no ability to gently blend in areas where you may decide to feather the light at say 50%. Yes I do test shots and that helps but I find it very difficult to be exactly right with the quantity of light every time. Hope that's helpful.
How powerful your flashlight? I read from some other posts that it should be a strong flash light at about at least 1000 lumens. Thank you for the video.
