Transforming a wooden church with light

With only a handheld light, how can we transform a dark scene with a wooden church into something magical and enchanting?

In the photo above, I used a Pentax K-1 with a 28-105mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. I wanted a decent amount of time to light paint everything with my handheld light. Therefore, my settings were 3 minutes at f/8 ISO 200. It would drop to 36 degrees since it was at 7400 feet in elevation, so running up and down hills like this kept me good and warm.

What is light painting?

Light painting is a term that is often used loosely to describe any addition of light to a night photograph. Really, though, light painting is a technique that uses a handheld light source to illuminate a scene during a long exposure. You are quite literally painting the scene with light. Night photographers have used this technique for many decades.

It was twilight in the mountains, and night was just about upon us. And there were no streetlights or moon. In other words, it was very dark. But with a long exposure photo and a handheld flashlight, there’s always a way. Here’s how I light painted a beautiful wooden church nestled in the mountains of Nye County, Nevada.

Four steps to light painting a wooden mountain church

Step 1: Illuminating the ground

I ran around and “swept” the ground with my handheld ProtoMachines LED2 light. I did this by shining my light very low to the ground. This was to not only create some texture on the ground, but illuminate it so it could be seen! If I had not done this, it would have come out almost completely dark except for a tiny bit of illumination from the lit cross on top.

Step 2: Illuminating the side of the church 

This was rather tricky. I illuminated the side of the church closest to the camera. How did I do this without the light shining into the camera and creating light trails? I blocked it with my body while walking around the scene. Easier said than done. Sometimes, you shine it on your hand or inadvertently shine it into the lens. But this time, I did not.

Step 3: Illuminating the front of the church

This too was a little tricky. I stood to the right side of the church and light painted the front from an angle to pick up all the wonderful details of the beautiful church. Like Step 2, I had to block the light from shining into the lens with my body. Mike Cooper blocks the light by using cardboard light modifiers, which are extremely effective.

Step 4: Illuminating the interior of the church

I walked inside the church, closed the door, and used a yellow light to light paint the interior. Here, I wanted to make certain that I did not “blow out” the details by shining too much light. I chose a yellow light to make the church look warm and inviting (which wasn’t hard to do, given its beauty and how nice the people in the town are).

Behind-the-scenes decisions to light painting the church

I could have simply turned on the lights of the interior. However, I chose not to because one of the bulbs was shining directly into the camera. Also, if I turned on all the lights, it also would turn on one of the exterior lights in the front, which I didn’t really want. One of the lights was burned out, so I would have only gotten one anyway.

Many people prefer to use LED panels to do their illumination at night. These can be very effective, and in fact, are preferred in circumstances where you want to keep a steady light throughout something such as a time-lapse video. However, I find that they take too much time to set up. I can walk around the scene and light paint from many angles that I would not be able to do with even a multi-LED panel setup. Therefore, almost all my light painted photos are with a handheld light.