Dan Mold shares some techniques for capturing creative images during the longer winter nights
Just because the sun has set for the day, that doesn’t mean your photographic fun has to stop. In fact, one of my favourite times to take photos is after dark, using basic camera kit and a variety of accessories that can be sourced for a minimal outlay.
In this feature, I’ll go over some of the essential kit that allows you to add your own lighting to scenes after dark – torches, LEDs, fibre-optic lights and flashguns. Then I’ll run you through some of my top creative light-painting techniques that will help to make your night-time outdoor shots really stand out. And, to round things off, I’ll show you how to shoot the amazing spectacle that is the Northern Lights.
1 GET THE RIGHT GEAR
Discover the affordable accessories that will make painting with light easier
Painting with light is one of the more specialised fields of photography, and there’s lots of niche equipment available to solve the particular challenges it poses, some of which can be rather pricey. The good news is that the essential kit you’ll need to get started with light-painting is fairly basic stuff that you probably have to hand already, such as an interchangable lens camera, a wide-angle lens, a basic flashgun, and a few different torches, string lights and coloured gels.
Once you’ve got the hang of light painting you can then look to upgrade your kit, slowly building it up over time as and when it’s convenient for you. This spreads the cost, and you’ll be able to work out from experience which upgrade items will most benefit your painting-with-light photography.
ESSENTIAL KIT
CREATIVE CAMERA from £300/$350
Even basic interchangablelens cameras are great for light painting, as they have full manual controls, with budget options including the Canon EOS 2000D and Nikon’s D3500. It could also be worth considering an Olympus OM-D or PEN mirrorless camera, which have a Live Composite feature that lets you see your light painting being built up in real time.
BUDGET FLASHGUN From £120/$120
A flashgun is important for all sorts of photographic scenarios, and should definitely be something to add to your kit bag. They’re great for illuminating large swathes of your landscape scenes at night. We like to set our flash to Manual mode with a low power value, then use the Test button to manually fire it off-camera and add a few blips of flash around the scene.
WIDE-ANGLE LENS from £300/$400
While you can take painting-withlight shots with any lens (even a kit lens will work well), you’ll often be shooting landscape scenes, so a wide-angle optic would be a good choice. A lens like the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 offers a wide field of view as well as a wide aperture of f/2.8, which helps suck in loa
