Light painting is a very specialized type of photography. Here, the photographer chooses a subject nestled in a very dark place and imagines a picture of the subject lit up instead of buried in darkness. Nighttime requires the camera to be set on a slow shutter speed in order to let in sufficient ambient light to see anything at all. But with an artificial light source such as a flashlight, one can splash light on the subject and leave the surrounding ground and sky elements very dark. It is sort of like turning on car headlights to illuminate a house.
There are two important aspects of the light painting exercise that must be understood and mastered in order to successfully complete the project. First is the image capture. It is best to have at least a little bit of evening light left in the sky ahead of complete darkness. This gives some color to the sky and provides a nice background. Next is to place the camera/tripod setup in an interesting compositional location. Finally, the aperture and shutter speeds are set as needed for the task (exact specs are not relevant here). With the shutter speed set at, perhaps 30 seconds, the photographer uses the light source to literally “paint” light onto a portion of the subject while the shutter remains open. This is repeated multiple times with light being painted on more sections of the subject until the whole subject has been captured with painted light. Oddly enough, the photographer can be standing in direct view of the camera, and as long as he keeps moving, his body will never show up in any of the exposures.
The second aspect of the light painting procedure is post-production processing on a computer. The numerous images are imported into a photo editor and with specific technical knowledge of correctly blending all the images together, the photographer is able to finish with a beautiful photo of the carefully-lit subject surrounded by silhouetted trees or other objects. Light painting is a bit labor-intensive, but is so fun and produces a very unusual image.