P#5 Using Artificial Light to Create Patterns in a Photograph on the Knife River

An unusual technique to light the Knife River

Rob Sheppard: The last photograph, on the Knife River just was interesting. I was doing a workshop up there. I'd gotten everybody out late, after the sunset, and we were using strong lights to do some light painting, and I thought this was really interesting because the waterfall itself is just this little waterfall. It wasn't all that dramatic.

This was about a few days after the water had been real high. Once you don't get rain up in that area, because the drainage area is small, the water flushes out so you don't have rushing water as much.

This is not the same stream but it is one nearby and it did not have all that rushing, powerful water because it's gone.

I thought it would be interesting to just get people out doing something to create some interesting new looks to a landscape.

In this case, I have a couple of people that are actually using lights. There's somebody that is taking a handheld light -- you can use any light -- a big, fairly strong flashlight from the hardware store. (click the image for a larger version)

I had some people on one side that were lighting up the rocks in the foreground, and I had some people on another side lighting up the falls in the back.

By doing this, it allows me to light very specific areas and create a very different looking image. Now, the photograph has this kind of blue quality around the areas that are being lit by the flashlights.

That blue quality is from the twilight. There's still some light in the sky, and that light in the sky is lighting this up. This is a long exposure, this is probably a minute long and it's an interesting technique. It's an easy technique to do.

You set your camera on a tripod, get a powerful flashlight, and you make sure it's dark enough that you can use the long exposure. Then you just continually run the light -- you keep it moving so you're painting over the subject area. You just keep it moving so your exposure is done.

Shooting digital is so great because you just look at it and say, "Oh, well I didn't do that right, I need to redo that. I need a little more light here, a little less light here," or, "I need to keep it moving more here," or whatever because you can see the results immediately.

The other thing is to warn people with digital that if they try this, when you do a long exposure, you should have your camera set, if it has a setting in the menus, to noise reduction. When you do that, after you take the picture, the camera is going to be working on getting rid of noise.

Processing the noise reduction will usually take at least as long as your exposure, so if you had a minute exposure, you're going to have another minute to wait while the camera works, processing noise reduction until you see something, so be patient. It can be a really neat way of getting a very different look for nature.

In conclusion

A photograph like this one of the Knife River, using different light sources combined with natural twilight, can be quite dramatic. Use the noise reduction function of your camera to get a better image with a long exposure.