Troy Paiva - Light Painted Night Photography PDF

Light Painted Night Photography: The “Lost America” Technique Troy Paiva
Light Painted Night Photography:

The “Lost America” Technique
Troy Paiva
1
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LIGHT PAINTED NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY:

THE "LOST AMERICA" TECHNIQUE
COPYRIGHT © 2012 TROY PAIVA

ISBN: 978-1-4675-3028-6
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Table of Contents
Why Night Photography?! ! 4
How Did We Get Here?! ! 5
The Lost America Experience! 6
Equipment Doesnʼt Matter! ! 7
The Gear List! ! ! ! 8
Letʼs Go Shooting! ! ! 12
Exposure! ! ! ! ! 15
Lighting! ! ! ! ! 17
Post-Production! ! ! ! 22
Photoshop Samples! ! ! 24
Locations! ! ! ! ! 27
Beyond Technique! ! ! 29
The Plates!! ! ! ! 31
Acknowledgements! ! ! 82
The Planet of Lost Luggage

San Francisco International Airport demolition, San Francisco, California.
5/20/2008 9:42 PM, Canon 20D, f/5.6, ISO 100, 30 seconds, 3500K.
Multiple blue and red-gelled strobe pops, available sodium vapor lighting.
2
Why Night Photography? Night work doesnʼt occupy the typical “click of the shutter” and
“capture an instant” photographic mindset. Itʼs a more deliberate
Historically, night shooting has fascinated, yet intimidated process. Youʼre capturing a block of time thatʼs tangible in human
photographers. Thereʼs always been a perception that itʼs an terms–in a single frame. And while it may take a half hour to create
arcane and difficult discipline to master, requiring exotic, state-of- a single picture, you can feel the weight of that elapsed time in the
the-art equipment and years of dedication to master its finished image, capturing a nocturnal mood and atmosphere that
eccentricities. But in the digital era, this couldnʼt be further from the simply canʼt be duplicated during the day.
truth: all you really need is a DSLR, tripod, remote shutter release
and the desire to do it.
The arrival of the first CMOS-sensored DSLRs around 2004

radically changed all photography. But the impact of these low-
noise cameras on night work, long considered one of the last
frontiers of mainstream photography, reinvented shooting at night.
Three important new features opened up night shooting to the

masses:
1.No need to understand the reciprocity failure rates for each

type of film youʼre using–exposure formulas can now be
extrapolated linearly.
2.Selective white balance adjustment in post-production,

effectively allowing you to choose your “film stock” after the
shoot, and for each individual image.
Mineral A100
Kincaid Nevada. 6/15/2011 12:47 AM, Canon 60D, f/8, ISO 200, 300
3.The preview screen, which lets you instantly assess your work,
seconds (x5), 5150K. Four 5-minute exposures, stacked for 20 minute star
allowing unlimited experimentation and refinement. trails. Most of the van and light painting was a 5th exposure, stacked on
top. The roof was lit with a xenon Stinger from 25 yards away and the
As a result, worldwide interest in night photography has exploded. interior, with a red LED from the rear window. By the time you finish this
book, youʼll know how to make images like this.
And rightfully so–night photography is a blast. Getting out in the
field, late at night . . . itʼs an exciting, peak experience, every time. Add light painting to the equation and the potential becomes
Everything changes at night, taking on different meaning, shrouded unlimited. When youʼre working with added light, youʼre creating an
in darkness. A sense of mystery and drama prevails. Working at image rather than just capturing it. You can coax your subject out of
night will reveal a whole new way of seeing the world. the background, selecting which areas to highlight
4
and which to leave dark. It allows you to tell a story, lighting your
subject like a studio shot or a movie set, but with simple tools that
How Did We Get Here?
fit in your pockets. The hand-applied aspect of this technique, The time exposure concept is as old as photography itself. The
coupled with the physicality of moving through the scene to add the first photograph ever taken in 1826 required an 8-hour
light, transcends photography as youʼve previously known it. exposure . . . in broad daylight. From the beginning, photographers
tried adding artificial light to the scene–using limelight and arc
For more than twenty years, long before the digital revolution, my lamps, but without much success. As photographic technology
photographic journey took me to hundreds of abandoned sites in advanced, exposures got shorter–to the point where photographers
the American West to shoot moonlit time exposures using gelled could freeze bright daylight action in a fraction of a second. Around
strobes and flashlights to light the scene. In the process, I naïvely the turn of the 20th century, magnesium flash powder was
resurrected and popularized old and out-of-style techniques, commonly used to add an instant explosion of light, suitable for
bringing this rarely seen aesthetic to subjects and locations that sub-one-second exposures.
had never been shot like this before. My growing body of work
eventually led to magazine features, books, gallery and museum At this point, these faster films could accumulate enough light in the
shows, workshops and TV appearances. What began as a pure space of a few minutes to capture well-lit, urban night scenes. Early
and innocent amateur experiment has become an artistic 20th century legends Alfred Stieglitz, and later, Brassai and Bill
obsession. Brandt created important bodies of night work by testing the outer
limits of the available technology.
What Iʼm sharing in this book came from my experience. Iʼve
actually lived all this, shooting thousands of multi-minute In the 1930s, everything changed. Film sensitivity had improved to
exposures, in hundreds of locations, under all kinds of conditions. the point where common exposures could be measured in
Iʼve made every kind of mistake there is to make and learned hundredths of a second. The flash bulb, followed by the strobe
lessons from all of them. This book will let you take advantage of flash, could sync with those hundredths-of-a-second exposures,
the lessons Iʼve learned–to help you steer clear of the pitfalls that allowing the photographer to artificially light a scene in total
plague both rookie and veteran night shooters. darkness, with total control, during an exposure that was faster
than the blink of an eye.
My intention is to provide a nuts-and-bolts explanation of every
image here, allowing you to incorporate these techniques into your Historically, the philosophy of photography had always been about
own work. I hope to provide you with a road map that will help working with the shortest exposure possible. Once photographers
guide you on your own photographic journey. didnʼt have to do time exposures anymore, they never looked back.
It was an era obsessed with speed and technology, so time
Before you continue further, youʼll need a basic understanding of exposure techniques went out of style and were nearly forgotten.
the principles of manual photography: f-stops, shutter speeds, O. Winston Linkʼs train-centric night images from the 1950s are a
depth of field (DOF), etc. If you stumble over any of these terms, perfect example of that mind-set: they were fractional exposures, lit
hang a U-turn and review the basics first. by massive, hardwired lighting rigs.
5
In the 1970s and ʼ80s, however, up and coming young experimenting with colored strobe and flashlights, striving to create
photographers like Steve Harper, Arthur Ollman, Richard Misrach, an aesthetic I could call my own.
Jan Staller and Michael Kenna, broke with this “shortest exposure
possible” mindset by experimenting with intentionally long, time Right around the turn of the 21st century, I began to work as an
exposure, night work. Some of these photographers also used illustrator with some early 3D modeling and rendering software. It
open flash and flashlights to accent their subjects. Their was immediately apparent that effective lighting was the key to
landscapes captured a singularly nocturnal mood and atmosphere, good 3D work, so I studied the use of artificial lighting to foster
unseen and out of style for decades. mood and emotion and the ways it can be used to lead a viewerʼs
eye though an image. These discoveries had an instant impact on
my photographic lighting as well.
The Lost America Experience
In 1989, I was approaching thirty and immersed in a career as an
illustrator and designer for a mass-market toy company. Since I
was painting and drawing for a living, I needed to find an outlet to
create personal art as far from those disciplines as I could.
My brother, Tom Paiva, was finishing his photography degree at the

Academy of Art in San Francisco. One of Tomʼs classes was a
semester-long night photography course, taught by Steve Harper.
When I saw the work being done by Steve, Tom and two of the
other students (Tim Baskerville–eventual founder of “The
Nocturnes” and Lance Keimig–eventual author of Night
Photography: Finding Your Way in the Dark), my mind was blown.
As a life-long ghost town and junkyard explorer, I immediately
realized the potential for using night photography to capture the
haunted souls of the abandoned places of the American West.
Steve allowed me to audit a classroom lecture by Michael Kenna

and tag along on some class shoots in the industrial sections of
Boneyard Rows
San Francisco. I bought my first real camera–a beat up old 35mm Mojave California. December 1990, around midnight, Canon FX, f/5.6,
Canon FX–and took my first baby steps in photography of any ISO 160 Tungsten Chrome Film, 8 minute exposure.
sort . . . by making 8-minute exposures of abandoned Route 66
buildings under the full moon. I quickly came around to the idea of From 1990, very early in my night photography career, these Boeing 707s
adding light to the scene, to pop details out of the shadow areas and Convair 880s are lined up at the Mojave Airport, awaiting their fate.
Almost all these aircraft have been recycled. Ambient full moon light only.
and enhance the atmosphere. After reverse-engineering the work
of William Lesch, Chip Simons, and O. Winston Link, I began
6
Equipment Doesnʼt Matter

When I started night shooting, I had zero experience with
photography or lighting. I didnʼt know an f-stop from a bus stop.
Since I didnʼt realize that night photography and lighting were
supposed to be hard to do, I just jumped in with both feet. I spent
the first 10 years basically winging it, opening up the lens for about
8 minutes and waving lights around. I approached it as a drawer
and painter would, where it was more important to create an
emotional response than take technically perfect pictures. Almost
all the work in my first book, Lost America, was shot during this
period–on outdated film, shoved through a 20-year-old, $40 flea-
market body. I burned out a series of $5 garage sale flashes, and I
cut gel swatches from a free sample book. It was downright crude
by todayʼs standards, but the methodology of working with broken
down old equipment suited the broken down old subjects.
Iʼm not saying you have to shoot with equipment older than you
are, held together with tape and rubber bands, but I am saying that
you can.
Besides, no camera equipment is really designed for night The Graveyard of Southern Rock
photography anyway. Film was always the weakest link. Paulʼs Junkyard, Lancaster, California 3/16/2011 8:12 PM, Canon 20D,
Reciprocity failure, color shifts, grain pop and extreme clipping f/5.6, ISO 100, 31 seconds, 5600K.
were a normal part of the night experience on film. The Canon A-
series bodies used expensive and hard to find lithium batteries, A case of 8-track tapes, rotten and decaying inside an abandoned and
which drained completely over the course of just two 8-minute collapsing workshop. These were mostly Skynyrd and Allman Brothers
albums. Totally dark space. Natural and blue-gelled LED flashlight.
exposures. It must never have occurred to the designers that
anyone would even want to do an 8-minute exposure. Digital
cameras havenʼt been designed for 8-minute exposures either. Itʼs latest and greatest camera body or gadget to do this kind of work?
only with the arrival of the most recent DSLRs that photographers You donʼt. Iʼve had many years of success shooting with minimal
can make noise-free exposures this long, but only if the ambient gear and maximum experimentation, answering to no one but
temperature is low enough. myself. Equipment is secondary; what matters is that you head
out, prepared to shoot a lot of frames and have some fun.
While night photography will test the limits of any equipment you
might use, why limit your potential with the notion that you need the
7
The early, cropped-sensor CMOS DSLRs (like the Canon 20D,

The Gear List which was used to shoot most of the work in this book), were highly
Camera susceptible to noise from heat and exposure length. Even at 2
Any Canon or Nikon DSLR model made after 2004 can be used for minutes, on a hot summer night, the skies could look like they had
this type of night shooting, with varying degrees of success. salt spilled all over them.
Ultimately, the camera needs to have the following features and
capabilities: Every new generation of cameras advances the technology.
Newer models, like the Canon 5D Mark II & Mark III, 7D, 60D and
• RAW files: Aside from the wealth of data stored in RAW files (not Nikon D700 & D800 can do perfectly clean 15-minute exposures on
found in .jpgʼs), the ability to adjust your white balance after the a cold night, without running noise reduction. Every camera is
shoot is invaluable. different, so you should experiment with yours under various
conditions to learn its limitations.
• Manual exposure and focus controls: Night shooting requires
you to work outside the cameraʼs automatic capabilities.
Lenses
Many night shooters work with wide and super-wide lenses for
• Bulb setting: Most of your exposures will be longer than 30
their small size and weight–for stability on a tripod, their increased
seconds.
depth of field, and most important, their ability to capture a large
expanse of the night sky.
• Remote shutter release: Will allow you to lock the lens open for
minutes at a time.
Itʼs important to make sure your lens has a distance scale
window. Itʼs invaluable for the hyperfocal and zone-focusing
• High ISO capability: With easily accessed controls, so that you
techniques used in night photography.
can make relatively short, high ISO test shots.
• Live View: While this isnʼt required, it has revolutionized close-up

focusing in the dark. This feature can be found on some newer
models
More important than any trick features or the number of

megapixels, the critical variable from camera to camera is the
amount of sensor noise created by extended exposures and high
ambient temperatures. It's best to use a camera with a CMOS
sensor instead of a CCD sensor, which were much more
susceptible to noise and almost always required running in-camera Distance Scale Window.
noise reduction. Most DSLR models with CCD sensors have been
phased out in recent years.
8
Most of your shooting will be done at f/5.6 or f/8.0, so super-fast, Some tripod heads have a built-in bubble level. If yours doesnʼt,
super-expensive lenses are not required. Fixed focal length lenses get a hot-shoe bubble level so your horizon will always be straight.
weigh less and are often sharper and less susceptible to lens-flare Some newer cameras have an LCD screen-based level, so thereʼs
than zoom lenses, but zooms offer more flexibility by allowing you no excuse for unintentionally crooked horizons.
to work all night without changing lenses. With all the work I do in
filthy conditions, not changing lenses in the field is critical to If the wind is really howling, make sure your tripod legs are fully
keeping my sensor free of dust. spread, and keep the camera as low to the ground as possible.
Avoid raising the camera on the center post, and secure the
All this work was shot with just one lens, a Tokina 12-24mm zoom. camera strap and remote release wire to prevent vibration.
Mounted on my cropped sensor cameras, the effective focal length
is 19-38mm. In the film era, I used three prime lenses: a 20, 24 Remote Shutter Release
and 28mm. With your camera set to Bulb mode, the remote shutter release
will lock your lens open indefinitely, allowing you to do minutes-long
Always protect your lens with a UV filter. My shoot has been exposures. Unlike film-era cable releases, DSLR remotes are not
saved more than once by a UV filter shattering, instead of the lens, standardized, so make sure to buy one that fits your camera.
when the tripod took a dive. Name brand models can be pricy, but there are many perfectly
good, inexpensive knock offs out there for you to choose from. Use
Remember, if youʼre going to be light painting, youʼll frequently be a piece of Velcro to attach the remote to your tripod leg so that it
shooting into the moonlight and shadows. Lens-flare will be a doesnʼt drag in the dirt or get tangled and snap off.
constant concern, especially with multi-element zoom lenses, so
using a lens hood is critical. Timer remotes are more expensive, but extremely handy. They
allow you to set precise exposure lengths and serial interval shots,
Tripod which can be used for star trail stacking. If you donʼt use a timer
A solid, heavy-duty tripod is an absolute must. I use an aluminum remote, you will need an alternative to accurately time your
Slick Pro 700DX with an old-school pan-tilt head. Yes, it weighs a exposures. Use a simple stopwatch or the timer built into your cell
ton, but when youʼre doing minutes-long exposures in windy phone.
conditions, on slopes, or in loose dirt, you need something thatʼs
rock solid and heavy. There are images in my first two books that were captured without
a remote release. Losing or breaking your remote doesnʼt mean
Rule of thumb: if your tripod has braces between the legs or a that you have to stop shooting; it just means you need to use a
hand-crank to raise the center post, you need to upgrade. piece of tape and a pebble to carefully hold the shutter button
Lightweight amateur tripods can barely support a bulky DSLR in down.
perfect indoor conditions, but out in the field, youʼre putting your
camera at serious risk when itʼs perched on top of one of these tiny
tripods.
9
Donʼt Leave Home Without . . . through a long night. Mints, candy and other packaged sweets can
A flashlight. Iʼve devoted a whole section to flashlights coming up, provide that shot of energy you need at 3 in the morning.
but even if you donʼt experiment with light painting, always keep a
small, low-power flashlight handy to help you navigate deep Many people feel more comfortable with a shooting partner.
shadows, set and focus your camera, and navigate inside your Even if you split up when you get to the location and shoot on your
pack. own all night, itʼs comforting to know that thereʼs someone else out
there with you. Iʼve shot alone most of my career and love the
Extra batteries. Always carry spares of every type of battery you solitude inherent in night photography, but the added safety,
are using. A single new camera battery may get you through the assistance and camaraderie a buddy provides is undeniable.
whole night at first, but its ability to hold a charge will degrade over
many cycles, so you may eventually see the need to change the Your cellphone will be handy for innumerable tasks. Aside from
camera battery in the field. The LCD on the camera is the main using it to communicate with your shooting partners, or calling for
source of battery drain, and if youʼre light painting, youʼll be using it help in an emergency, the illumination from the screen can also act
a lot. Camera batteries will also drain faster than normal in cold as a flashlight. Smartphone apps for strobe lights, stopwatches,
conditions. If it fails and you donʼt have a spare, keep it in a warm DOF charts and interactive star maps are all useful tools to have in
pocket for a while and try it again. Overuse like this can shorten its your pocket on a night shoot. Make sure you start the night with a
extended life, but youʼll probably be able to get a few more shots full charge.
out of it tonight.
Always bring samples of your night work. Carry some 8x10s in
It never ceases to amaze me how easily your lens can get dirty your pack or keep some images stored in your phone. Theyʼll be
when youʼre bumping around in the dark, so carry lens tissues or the perfect icebreaker if the police or a property owner stops you.
a soft cloth. Of course, your sleeve will do in a pinch, but seeing Theyʼre also useful for defusing confrontations with squatters,
the cloth in your bag periodically will remind you to check for dirt. copper thieves and partying teenagers.
Gafferʼs tape is your best friend. Easy to tear and shape, sticky Youʼre going to be outside for hours, late at night. Dress properly
enough for repeated use, yet leaves no residue: itʼs perfect. Iʼve for the conditions. Youʼll be surprised how rarely you get to sit
lost count of the times Iʼve used a piece of tape to fix something down while night shooting, so wear solid boots with comfortable
that saved the shoot. Iʼve even worked all night with a broken socks. Those hot, still nights when you can work in shorts and a
camera taped to a tripod. You wonʼt need it for every shoot, but t-shirt are rare, but if skin is showing, better spray it with mosquito
that one time you need it, youʼll really need it. Donʼt carry a bulky repellant. Odds are itʼll be cold, so layer up with a turtleneck shirt,
roll with you; keep pieces stuck to flashlights and tripod legs, ready heavy pants and long johns. Carry gloves (I cut the thumb, index
to peel off and use. A multi-tool, like a Leatherman, can also be and middle fingers off of mine) and a stocking cap, for when it
handy if you need to fix something. inevitably gets colder after midnight. Deep, large jacket pockets
are extremely convenient for carrying frequently used items like
Your energy will ebb and flow as the evening progresses; keep flashlights, gels, strobe and phone.
your favorite drinks and snacks in your pack to help you get
10
Youʼll need a pack to carry these items. Many photographers

hump exotic packs, loaded with 50 pounds of accessories, but with
the right clothes, almost everything on this list (except the camera
and tripod) will fit in your pockets. I use a simple, off the rack
daypack to carry food and drink, spares and samples. I always
take it off to aid my mobility and balance once I decide to start
shooting.
Thereʼs no end to the gear that you can bring on a night shoot.
Some night photographers find wearing carpet-layerʼs kneepads
more comfortable when setting up low-angle shots. Some swear
by clip-on flare blockers. Some people even drag a camp chair
around with them all night. Personally, I prefer to be as free and
unencumbered as possible.
The Failed Mascot

Paulʼs Junkyard, Lancaster, California. 10/10/2011 2:51 AM, Canon 60D, f/8,
ISO 200, 123 seconds, 5750K.
All thatʼs left of this 1960s Ford C-Series truck is a battered cab sitting in the
dirt, with a legless doll hanging where the mirror used to be. The roof had been
pulled several feet vertically–peaked like a tent, making the center of where the
windshield was, twice its normal height. Placing the camera in the center of this
gap, lens set to its widest setting (12mm, cropped sensor, about 19mm usable),
I got as close as possible–to fill the frame with details and enhance the distorted
roof.
I popped a red-gelled strobe in the footwell–straight up into the steering wheel–

to project its shadow onto the ceiling, which also filled the cab with bounced red
light. It took several tries to get the shadow placed around the doll (the ceiling
in this image was composited from another exposure). I used a snooted AA
Maglite (from 2 sides, half as much light on the left) to isolate the doll from the
red background. I also grazed the steering wheel and dashboard with a little
Maglite too–just enough to show form, but not enough to distract from the doll.
Then I went behind the cab and popped a blue-gelled strobe into the glass and
pile of debris in the background.
11
Donʼt use your flashlight constantly. When you do need to use

Letʼs Go Shooting light to navigate your way through deep shadows or look inside
When I first started night shooting, if there was a rookie mistake to your bag, use a small, low power light. Turn down the LCD
make, I made it. I even lost a whole night of work because I failed screens on your camera and phone too. Keep your lights
to catch the film in the cameraʼs take-up-spool. You can avoid suppressed as much as possible.
similar frustrating experiences of your own though practice and
experimentation. The only way to become consistently good at
night photography is by doing it. A lot.
Do not use a headlamp
Theyʼre the worst kind of light possible for a Ninja night
photographer to use. Its high angle and constant movement will let
Working in the dark takes some getting used to, so shoot at night
everyone know for miles around that youʼve arrived. And, aside
as often as you can. Learn how to operate your camera, tripod
from ruining your own night vision like any excessively bright
and remote in the dark, only by feel. Be systematic and
flashlight will, if you talk to your shooting partner, the light will shine
consistent in your working process. Always keep your
right in their eyes, ruining theirs too. The other major issue is that
accessories in the same pockets so you donʼt have to clutter your
the light source is right beside your eyes, making everything you
mind with “where did I put my flash again?” Eventually, the
look at seem flat and shadowless–as if it was lit by an on-camera-
mechanics of working mostly by touch in the dark will become
flash. Itʼs exactly how you donʼt want to see the world when youʼre
second nature. When you can operate your camera and lighting
trying to compose moonlit photographs.
equipment on instinct alone, you can relax and become swept up in
the moment with your lighting and composition.
There will be situations where youʼll find yourself in total darkness,
like a building interior, and youʼll have to use light to be able to see
Work quietly, even if youʼre not trespassing. Disappear into the
anything. In these situations, a low powered flashlight will allow
scenery and observe the night as it slowly passes. It takes a
you to move around and compose. Leave the light on, but put it
meditative personality to hang out in a mountain meadow, or at an
down, pointed at a wall or the ceiling–some reflective surface, away
abandoned gas station–for hours in the middle of the night–without
from the image area. A diffused, glowing light will fill the space, just
saying a word. Let yourself become part of the surroundings, and
bright enough to set up. Turn it off when you start your exposure.
your senses will come alive. Be a Ninja: do your work quietly,
methodically and unseen.
Composing in the Dark
Preserve Your Night Vision Use your night vision to compose and frame the shot as much as
possible. Sometimes you may need to shine your flashlight on the
Work by moonlight. Let your eyes adjust to the brightness provided
subject, especially around the edges of the frame, to make sure
by the full moon for a few minutes and youʼll realize you don't need
youʼre not cutting anything off. When you think youʼve got it right,
to use artificial light to see. Rely on your moonlit night vision to
check your bubble level one more time. Make sure the tripod is
evaluate your subject and frame your shot, because that same
locked down tight, or it can slowly sag over the course of a long
moonlight will also be the main light source in your photographs.
exposure.
12
One of the truly game-changing advances with digital night with the naked eye, but stars can start to appear as lines in your
photography is the ability to fine-tune your composition by image in a matter of seconds. Point your camera northward and it
previewing and adjusting with high ISO test shots. Under full will register a vortex of circular trails that seem to spiral into Polaris.
moon conditions, an exposure of 8 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 3200 is
the same ambient exposure as 2 minutes at f/5.6, ISO 200. These
test shots will be unacceptably noisy, but if it takes three tries to set
up the shot, thatʼs 24 seconds vs. 6 minutes. Itʼs an important
productivity trick, letting you commit to a multi-minute exposure
only when youʼre ready to. If your camera has custom presets, set
one of them at this exposure, so you can toggle back and forth
from test shots to actual shots with just one click.
Many of the images in this book were shot looking up from low
angles, frequently just a foot or two from the ground. Low angles,
combined with the wide-angle lens, distort the image, causing the
foreground subjects to recede under a gigantic sky. Another
compositional benefit of low set ups is to use your foreground
subjects to block distant streetlights lurking on the horizon.
Compose for the clouds. Moving clouds, smearing across the

sky, can transform a good shot into a great one. Figure out which
way theyʼre moving, and find a subject to put under them that ties Undertow Beech
into their shapes and flow. Work quickly; clouds can build, move, Beech 18, Aviation Warehouse, El Mirage, California. 11/27/2009 11:25 PM,
and dissipate in minutes, completely changing with every shot. Canon 20D, f/5.6, ISO 100, 241 seconds, 3950K.
Capturing the right amount of movement depends on wind speed
A straight line of clouds covered half the sky for a while during this shoot, so I
and exposure length, but if the sky is almost entirely cloudy, shorter looked for set ups where I could incorporate the transition line into the
exposures will be better; they will keep the few open spots in the composition. I used a low camera angle, looking up, to accentuate the sky
clouds from having time to close up. Total overcast is the enemy, and make the plane more imposing. Thereʼs red gelled strobe inside the
rendering the sky flat and dull. It also blocks the moonlight, making cockpit and LED flashlight on the engine nacelle. I was careful to leave the
area behind the yellow prop-tip dark so it would pop off the frame.
exposures unfeasibly long. Your best option with totally cloudy
skies would be to downplay the sky and do short-exposure light
painting work. The counter-clockwise rotation means the stars in the east move
upward, and in the west, down. The stars in the southern sky will
Star trails are another unique compositional element to work with. move horizontally, to the west. The closer to the North Star, the
Polaris, or the North Star, found at the end of the Little Dipperʼs shorter the trails will be. Be aware of the direction the stars are
handle, is the center of rotation. The movement is too slow to see moving, and incorporate them into your compositions.
13
Focus
Before you can take that first test shot, you need to pull focus. Accurate manual close-up and medium-distance focusing can be
Thereʼs just not enough light, even under the brightest full moon, done with live view. Turn it on, shine a light on your subject and
for current infrared-based auto-focus systems to work. Looking use the 5x and 10x zoom feature to zero in on a fine detail and
though the viewfinder to focus manually, by either moonlight or simply dial in your focus.
flashlight, is virtually impossible as well. But the solution is simple:
old-fashioned zone focusing techniques will work for 90% of the Without live view, itʼs best to measure close distances and use
outdoor night shooting youʼll do. the distance scale on the lens barrel to set it manually. Rather than
carrying a tape measure, you can do it accurately enough (when
Zone focusing allows you to use depth of field (DOF) to keep a factoring in for DOF) with your body. For most people, fingertip to
range of distances in focus. With a wide-angle lens set at f/8, the elbow is about 18 inches. Place your hands fingertip-to-fingertip,
hyperfocal DOF range will be approximately 8 feet (2.5m) to infinity and your straight-line, elbow-to-elbow distance is about 3 feet.
(∞), so leaving your focus ring set halfway between 8 feet and Arms outstretched straight, fingertip-to-fingertip is your body height.
infinity will keep everything within that range in focus. For most Using this method will teach you to quickly and accurately gauge
landscape shooting, the closest subject in the frame will normally these kinds of small distances by eye.
be at least 8 feet away, so you could set the focus like this and
shoot all night without ever having to touch it again (but you should
always check it before every shot to make sure you didnʼt bump it). Do This
This is where the auto-focus sets itself
in daylight when focused on the sky
Itʼs important to understand exactly where infinity is on your and a tree, a hundred yards away. I
lens. Zoom AF lenses are designed to expand and contract with now know that this is the correct
temperature changes, so the focusing ring actually moves past hyperfocal setting for ∞ on this lens.
infinity. If you just turn the focus ring until it stops, the entire image
will be out of focus. Frequently there is a line on the distance scale Donʼt Do This
that is attached to the ∞ symbol. This line depicts the actual infinity This is the focus ring manually
cranked out to the stop, PAST ∞.
setting for that lens. You can also check for it in daylight by auto- Everything in an image shot like this
focusing on something at infinity and note where the line falls on will be out of focus the same amount,
the distance scale. regardless of its actual distance.
When focusing on close up work in the dark, you can sometimes

auto-focus by shining a bright light on the subject. Auto-focus on it
Whatever technique you use to focus, if thereʼs any doubt at all,
and then set the lens back to manual to hold that distance setting.
zoom into the preview of a high ISO test shot and make certain
The reliability of this technique depends on the lens, the reflectivity
that youʼre nice and crisp.
and color of your subject, as well as the brightness of the light you
use. It probably wonʼt work beyond a few feet (1m).
14
You may need to go to 8 minutes or even longer. Shooting into

Exposure the moon can force you to shorten your exposures dramatically,
The Full Moon down to a minute or 30 seconds, so you donʼt blow out the sky.
All the exterior work in this book was done within 3 nights, before Factor in clouds, which can both block and reflect the light, and
or after the full moon. The full moon occurs every 28 days. In the youʼll find that this range is just a starting point. Remember,
preceding days, the growing, or “waxing,” moon rises about 1 hour moonlight is simply reflected sunlight, so it reacts in the same
before sunset, per day. On the day of the full moon, it rises the ways sunlight does to clouds, lens flare and other atmospheric
same time the sun sets. Depending on the season and your conditions.
latitude, it will rise in roughly the same spot the sun did and
generally follow its track across the sky. The day after, the cycle Work within the numbers of this triad, and youʼll get full moon-lit,
reverses and the shrinking, “waning,” moon rises about one hour “night for day” exposures like the images in this book.
later each day.
Exposure Subtleties
There's a 6- to 7-day range around the actual full moon where itʼs If youʼre light painting in moonlight, underexposure can be used to
full enough to call it a "full moon" for the purposes of this kind of good effect for adding contrast to the scene. Leave the frame dark
night photography. If itʼs smaller than ¾, it means pushing by a stop or two, so that your lit subject pops out of the
exposures out to 20-minutes and beyond–simply not practical for background.
current DSLR technology.
If conditions allow it, and you want to make longer exposures to
The Exposure Triad capture longer star trails or other movement, stop down and
1.Expose at f/5.6 or f/8. Sticking with one f-stop will give you a double the exposure time for each full-stop of difference. For
consistent benchmark for light painting falloff and intensity. These example: move from f/5.6 for 2 minutes, to f/8 for 4 minutes, to f/11
settings will give you a good compromise between workable for 8 minutes, to f/16 for 16 minutes. Donʼt worry if you have to run
exposure lengths and DOF. back to your camera to close the lens and your exposure lasts for
an extra 15 or 30 seconds. Itʼs only a small percentage of the
2.Expose at ISO 100 or 200. Use your cameraʼs lowest whole overall exposure length, so it will have little or no effect on the
number ISO for the smoothest images possible. Newer cameras finished image.
can work at 200 without much increased noise. Just remember
that noise will compound quickly in high ambient temperatures You can even walk through the shot and not appear in the image
(over 75°F/24°C) and with longer exposure times. Keeping your because your time in the frame is a relatively insignificant portion of
ISO low will help to hold in check one of the major sources of the entire exposure. Youʼd have to stand still for about 10% of the
noise. overall exposure length (or cast some light on yourself) before a
ghostly image would start to appear in the shot. This freedom of
3.Expose for 2 to 4+ Minutes. Time is your big variable. There movement through the scene plays a critical part in your ability to
can be as much as two full stops difference in exposures by the light paint.
light from a smaller 3-day-waxing moon vs. the actual full moon.
15
Working In Total Darkness

Some of this work was done in total darkness or very deep shade,
where a wide-open, 4-minute exposure would still yield a totally
black frame. These images tend to be close-ups, usually interiors,
which rely entirely on added light to create an image. In these
cases the exposure length doesnʼt matter. Open the lens, add
the lighting as quickly and efficiently as you can, and then close the
lens.
Donʼt Pick Up the Camera

Now that youʼve made an exposure, the first thing youʼll want to do
is see it. Use your dimmed LCD to chimp the shot, but donʼt move
the camera to do it. You just spent all that time lining up the
composition and setting the focus. If you move the camera, youʼll
have to go through that entire process again to do a second
exposure. This is also important if you plan to use compositing or
star trail stacking techniques in post-production. This way each
frame will line up perfectly with the others. If your camera is at a
difficult angle and has a swivel LCD screen, use it to avoid laying in
the dirt or contorting your body uncomfortably to preview your
images.
Roys
Amboy, California. 3/19/2008 12:01 AM, Canon 20D, f/5.6, ISO 100, 30
seconds, 3900K.
I used a Stinger flashlight to just graze the letters and neon tubes from below,
specifically choosing those details to be the subject of the image. This was
intentionally underexposed by at least one stop to retain the nightʼs dark
ambiance and let the lighting control the movement of the viewerʼs eye.
16
to the inverse square law: A subject twice the distance from the
Lighting light source will only receive a quarter of the amount of illumination.
Many people think the lighting in my photos happens in an instant– A pop at F/11 requires twice as much power as one at f/8, to have
one big multi-pop burst of light, synced with the camera the way itʻs the same effect. This potentially confusing formula is one of the
done in studio photography. This work is not done that way. best reasons to stick with a medium f-stop like f/8 and compensate
with your flash using distance and power.
I don't use complex lighting rigs, remotes, slave-flashes, soft
boxes, or light stands–all of my lighting is hand held. Because Most of the time youʼll be popping flashes on things 5-10 feet
the exposures are minutes long, I can illuminate the scene from (2-3m) away, so set it to 1/4 power or lower, depending on gel
many angles, one light source at a time. Frequently, I light an density and the subjectʼs ability to absorb light. To light a large area
entire scene with just one small flashlight. It's a very simple and low or something far away, go to full power and use the flashʼs zoom
impact process, which allows me to travel light and work quickly. feature to concentrate and project the light. The strobe will give you
a large field of evenly distributed light with sharply defined
The key to defining light painting vs. studio lighting is this hand-held shadows. Strobes are great for lighting whole rooms and for
aspect, which gives the light a freer, more painterly quality– freezing moving objects like people.
a spontaneous human element not achievable with rigid, static
studio lighting. Beware of bounce back. If youʼre inside the frame popping
flashes, the light can bounce off your subject and back onto you,
Flash accidentally imprinting you into the image. Make sure that your
I wore out a series of cheap flea market flashes before I settled on body is hidden from the cameraʼs view.
a Vivitar 285 that I used for almost 20 years. Dropped and banged
countless times, when I finally retired it, there was more superglue Flashlights (aka torches)
than plastic holding it together. Modern flashes like the Canon Flashlights give a much smaller area of light than strobes.
430/580 or Nikon SB700/900 are stronger than the Vivitar, while Because this is a continuous-source light that you can move
using less battery power. All the strobe work in this book was done around, it makes for softer, more diffused shadow edges. Theyʼre
with a Canon 430EX, using a technique called open flash– ideal for details and spot lighting.
meaning the strobe is not synced with the camera. I just point and
fire it manually. Most of the time, youʼll want the area of light it casts to have a soft
edge. Itʼs easier to give a soft-edged light a hard edge with
Remember, just because you can see the light from the flash hit the masking or a snoot, than vice versa.
subject doesnʼt mean that the camera will record it. How much of
the strobeʼs light appears in the final image is predicated on three There are literally hundreds of flashlight options on the market.
things: the power of the flash, the distance from the flash to the Brand and price isnʼt as critical as getting an overlap of intensity
subject, and the f-stop. The more you stop down, the shorter the and brightness, so you can effectively light anything from a close-
distance the light will travel, and the less intense the light will up of a screw head, to a whole locomotive. All the work here was
appear in the image. The effect is known as fall off and is subject lit with the following flashlights:
17
Low power: A small keychain LED light is excellent for very close Avoid million+ candlepower lights found in discount stores. They
work, from a few inches to a few feet. Theyʼre great for looking in are too bright for almost any applications and are usually too bulky
your camera bag without ruining your night vision too. Frequently and heavy to carry.
these can be had for free, as swag from conventions and corporate
meetings. Various color-casts are associated with the different strobe and
flashlight bulb types: LED (cold-blue) and xenon (pure white to
Medium power- LED: The Coast LED Lenser 7736D, with five warm yellow). Itʼs best to carry both LED and xenon lights because
white bulbs and one red, is the “LED light” I mention in all the each responds differently to the colors of your subjects and gels.
image captions. Its output is approximately 100 Lumens, is usable
up to about 25 feet (8m), and gives a very clean, cool-toned light Lighting Gels
with nice soft edges. This light, or its equivalent, can be bought at Lighting gels are a thin, translucent, plastic sheet, impregnated with
any major hardware store. This is my general-purpose flashlight. I color. Theyʼre installed on light sources by the theatrical and film
usually carry two. industries to add color to stage lighting. Gels can be purchased at
a pro-camera outfitter or theatrical supply house. They come in
All LED flashlights are not created equal. Cheap lights will have a 20x24” (51x61cm) sheets for less than $10. The most common
much stronger blue or green cast that can even be seen with the brand, Rosco, makes literally hundreds of colors to choose from.
naked eye. The whiteness and clarity found in the more expensive
$20-$50 models will give you a more neutral source to work with. Iʼve worked with dozens of colors over the years and found each to
be unique in tone and density. In yet another simplification of my
Medium power- xenon: A venerable classic that can be bought workflow, I now only carry a basic set of common colors:
almost anywhere, Iʼve used AA Mini Maglites as a light painting
tool for over 20 years. Itʼs lower in power and noticeably dimmer Red: Roscolux #026 or #2001
than the LED, so itʼs only effective up to about 15 feet (5m). Youʼll Blues: Roscolux #2006 and #4290
probably need to hold it on your subject longer than the LED, but Green: Roscolux #2004 or #375
its golden glow works beautifully on warm colored subjects. They Orange: Roscolux #021
can weaken quickly under heavy use, shifting from yellow to Lime/Yellow: Roscolux #4590
orange, so keeping fresh batteries in these lights is important.
Keep in mind that each color will react differently to cool vs.
High power- xenon: Popular with police and firefighters for its warm toned light sources. Add to that the base color of the
incredible brightness in a body not much bigger than a AA Maglite, subject, camera white balance setting, the potential for mixing
the rechargeable Stinger Streamlight is the most powerful colors, and youʼll find that just 6 or 8 colors can be manipulated into
flashlight I carry. At 125 Lumens and 15,000 candlepower, itʼs too nearly infinite variations. Experiment with other gel colors and
bright for close up work, but can light a whole car from 50 feet develop your own color palette. Free swatch books are frequently
(16m) in a few seconds. Buy it online or over-the-counter from your available, but the little brick of swatches is too thick and the
local police outfitter.
18
swatches too small to be convenient to work with. I cut one up and highly controllable area of light, a few inches in diameter. Itʼs
experimented with pieces of it for years. perfect for spotlighting small details.
Itʼs best to use gels with transmission values greater than 10%
(which cuts the light by 3-4 stops), or theyʼll just be too dense to Cinefoil is a matte-black, triple thick, aluminum foil material. It can
work with. Gels with strong, vivid colors have the greatest impact. be used to shape and partially block light, by molding it around the
Some photographers make cardboard frames and use Velcro to light source.
attach them to their strobe, but in the interest of simplicity, I just
handhold them over the light source. Another theater term, gobo, is derived from something that “goes
between” the light source and subject to create a specific shadow
Youʼll find that gel material is slippery, crinkly and fragile. When shape. A goboʼs shadow will be more defined and crisp the further
youʼre trying to find one in the dark, every color looks the same. it is from the light source. For gobo-based lighting effects, the light
They can be absolutely maddening to work with. After years of source must be perfectly still; itʼs best to use a strobe, or stationary
experimentation, the best way to handle them Iʼve found is to cut light, to freeze the shadow edges. Carrying something in the field
3x5” swatches (8x12cm) from the parent sheet, laminate each to use as a gobo can be awkward, but taking advantage of subjects
side with clear packing tape and trim the edges. This makes at the scene to sculpt the light (like trees and fences) can be
them rigid and less likely to crinkle and stick together. To protect my extremely effective and dramatic.
fingers from the now sharp edges, I fold masking tape around all
4 sides. I also write the color on the tape, which can be easily Some basic lighting techniques
read by moonlight. I always keep the gels in the same order, in the Begin pre-visualizing your lighting while youʼre still composing.
same pockets–cools in one, warms in another. This might all start Establish what you want to accomplish early on. Before you open
to sound a little OCD, but being as organized as possible allows the lens, shine your flashlight into the areas you think you want to
you to actually do the work instead of spending 10 minutes looking light to see what distances, angles and colors look the best. If you
for the right gel. Making a set of gels like this takes a little time, but have a shooting partner with you, have them stay by the tripod to
a single gel will last for years instead of just a few nights. Of all the see how the scene looks from the cameraʼs view, while you
gear you take shooting, gels are the item you will lose most experiment with lighting the subject in various ways. This can be
frequently, especially if itʼs windy, so have extra swatches handy. invaluable for dialing in your exact lighting angles, giving you one
of those “Light it from riiiight there, thatʼs perfect!” moments.
There are other worthwhile tools that will allow you to manipulate
and control the light. Originally devised for theatrical lighting, a Preview the images as you go, fine-tuning the lighting until you
snoot is a cylinder or cone placed over a light source, focusing its get the exact look youʼre after. Shoot, see what works and what
light into a small area. Store-bought models come in many sizes doesnʼt, reshoot, reassess, and then, shoot again. Zoom into the
and price points. I use a simple cardboard tube, about 2” in preview and check the details. Your hit rate will eventually go up,
diameter and a foot long. Originally the center-core from a bolt of but donʼt be surprised, with high ISO tests and lighting
fabric, its thickness makes it extremely durable. Itʼs still held its experiments, to shoot 10 or 15 frames of a single set up before
circular shape, after being bashed around in a cramped backpack youʼre satisfied enough to finally move on to the next shot.
for years. Shining a flashlight through it projects a hard-edged, Spending 15 minutes to end up with one final 2-minute exposure is
19
not out of the ordinary. Light painting requires patience and shadows into already existing moonlit shadow areas. Overlap
persistence. them to create complex shapes and lines that enhance the
composition.
The use of color is an important element in this work.
Understanding elementary color theory–why complementary Bounce the light off of a surface outside the frame and onto your
colors work well together and how the additive color wheel subject. Store-bought reflectors, your white shirt, or nearby
works–is intrinsic to effective color light painting. structures all work well. Even the ground can reflect a
surprising amount of light. Bounced light has a very soft
Donʼt move your light. Donʼt walk around with the and diffused quality and can be extremely effective for
flashlight shining on your subject–youʼll flatten it out adding subtle colorations and shadow details.
by not leaving any shadows. Hold the flashlight in
one spot and rotate it from your wrist. If you need When trying to cover a large area, avoid stroking
to fill a large room with three overlapping flash with the flashlight, or your lighting may appear
pops, pivot the strobe on a single axis point. striped and uneven. Unintentionally striped
This will keep your shadows defined and light painting means youʼre using a source
crisp. that isnʼt diffused enough for the large area
youʼre trying to fill. Switch to a strobe, which
On the other hand, move your light. A will give you a larger, more consistent field
more diffused softbox effect can be of coverage. If you feel you have to use a
achieved by moving your flashlight in a circle flashlight, try backing up, so you can cover
while shining it on the subject. The larger the the entire subject area without having to move
circle, the softer the shadows will be. Holding a it very much. Just remember that the further
swatch of tracing paper, or a tissue over the light you back up, the less power the light will have. If
source will also act as a diffuser, but can really kill you canʼt back up, use a weaker, more diffused
The Additive Color Wheel
the lightʼs intensity. source.
Use the light with a shallow angle. Just skim the subject, to pull Some areas, like a partially opened refrigerator or cabinet, may be
out surface texture and details. difficult to light from inside without a traditionally synced, remotely-
fired flash. This is easily remedied: Before you open the lens, set a
Light the subject from angles perpendicular to the camera. lit flashlight down inside the subject, and turn the light off
Avoid standing right next to the camera to add your lighting. Youʼll without moving it. Open your lens, walk into the frame, and
just be mimicking on-camera-flash, which unflatteringly flattens the carefully turn the light back on. Donʼt linger, so the light wonʼt have
subject and leaves it shadowless. a chance to burn you into the image. After a few seconds, turn it
off the same way. Due to the confined space, it will probably need
Shadows are just as important as lit areas. Create shadows with to be on for a very short time, a few seconds at most.
your lighting by using gobos, or objects at the scene, to cast
20
Matte finishes have large diffuse areas of reflection with soft composition. Youʼll be “taking pictures of light painting” instead of
edges. Gloss finishes have small, intense, specular reflections. “light painting something youʼre taking pictures of.”
The less you move your light source, the smaller these hot spot
reflections will be. All reflections can be moved to other areas of Ultimately, youʼll need to know when to just leave it dark. Itʼs
the subject simply by changing the position and angle of the light. common for novice light painters to over-light the image: if youʼve
Light bounces off your subjects like a billiard shot. If that shot is got 6 colors, you donʼt have to use all of them in every shot. Every
directed into the cameraʼs lens, it will appear as a reflective hot
spot. Reflections are a normal byproduct of lighting and help
define the subjectʼs shape; just bear in mind that where and how
they fall is within your control.
Light for the shadows, not the moonlit areas. Over the course
of a multi-minute exposure, moonlight will accumulate and
overpower any light that you can lay down. Just as in daylight flash
photography, the light is used to fill the shadows, not the sunlit
areas. If you really want that moonlit object light painted,
underexpose the shot by 2+ stops–lay down your light quickly, and
close the lens.
If your subject has a strong natural color to begin with, consider

using a natural ungelled light source with a similar warm or cool
color-cast. Neutral colored, or white surfaces in shade, will give
you a blank canvas to work with. Warm light sources work best
with warm colored gels on warm toned subjects and vice versa.
Thunderbirds Are Go!
Pearsonville Junkyard, California. 4/23/2010 11:23 PM, Canon 20D, f/5.6,
Fireworks that emit sparks, burning steel wool spun on a string, ISO 100, 240 seconds (x2), 120 seconds, 5000K.
laser beams, drawing and writing with flashlights and glowsticks–all
done from inside the frame, in view of the camera–will leave There are pops of purple-gelled strobe between each car and through the
streaks and lines of light in the finished image called Light windshield–snooted red LED in the tail lights and onto the ground too. I
also added a few seconds of natural LED on the right trunk-lid edge and
Drawing or Light Graffiti. Experimenting with these effects is a lot
bumper, the reflection carefully placed to balance the moonlit reflections on
of fun and a logical progression in the light painting experience. the left side of the trunk.
Many light painters today, like Dennis Calvert and Hannu Huhtamo
have made names for themselves by doing this specific kind of This is a stack of two 4-minute exposures–focused on ∞ for 8-minute star
work. Keep in mind, when creating these shapes and patterns, trails, and a 2-minute exposure–focused on the tail lights, for increased
DOF.
youʼll be adding a new element to the image that will dominate the
21
image and subject doesnʼt need light painting. Err on the side of
subtlety and restraint. Leaving areas dark will add drama and
A Checklist of Lighting Variables
mystery to the scene.
If you find yourself in the field struggling with your lighting,
here's a basic checklist of possible things to consider:
1. f-stop. The more you stop down, the less intense the Post-Production
light will appear in the image. Stick with one f-stop and Post-production in the digital darkroom with Photoshop and
compensate with distance and power. Lightroom is an important part of any digital photographerʼs
workflow–in the same way the wet darkroom was important for
2. The distance from the object you're lighting. Too close serious film photographers. Cropping, dodging and burning,
and youʼll blow the subject out; too far and youʼll get no contrast adjustment, resizing: all of these are everyday post-
effect. Are you more than 50 feet (16m) away? Thatʼs production techniques common to both the digital and analog
probably too far for most light sources, especially if you're darkrooms. Digital techniques like sharpening, selective saturation
using a gel. adjustments, perspective correction, cloning-out of lens flare, and
image stacking are also used on some of this work, as mentioned
3. The flash. Most modern strobe units have power in the captions.
settings in one-stop increments; make sure you use the
right one for your f-stop and distance. The flashʼs zoom My post-production workflow rarely deviates from the techniques
feature spreads or concentrates the light and has a major listed above. These are all common Photoshop actions, well
effect on how the light falls. documented in hundreds of other books. As such, there are only a
few specialized post-production techniques that I will cover here.
4. The finish on the subject is one of the biggest
variables. Dark glossy objects like tree leaves require a
White Balance
tremendous amount of light. White painted metal,
Always shoot in RAW format so that you can adjust the white
weathered to a matte finish will saturate very quickly.
balance (WB) to suit the needs of the image when you open it later
in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. The WB setting is listed with
5. Every flashlight is different, so make sure you're using
every image in this book to help you understand how tone and
the right one for the job. Fresh batteries make a difference
color change with this setting.
too, especially in xenon lights.
Some night shots look better with a cool blue, tungsten balance
6. Gels will cause a loss of light transmission from 1/2 stop
setting (2850K); some need the more natural color of daylight
to 4+ stops. Make sure enough light is getting through.
balance (5500K). Occasionally you may want to accentuate a vivid
orange sky, lit with sodium vapor lights, by using a high
7. Moonlight. If the object you're lighting is bathed in
temperature setting like 8000K. Most of the images in this book fall
direct moonlight, don't bother lighting it. Just like in daytime
in the 3000s, striking a balance between retaining cool blue skies
photography, lighting is only meant for filling in shadows.
22
and keeping enough saturation in the rest of the color spectrum. Just make sure you donʼt move the camera when you refocus.
There are no rules–every image is different and should be judged Note that some lenses may shift framing slightly when racking
on its own. Experiment with the WB slider on your own images, to focus from near to far. If so, youʼll need to adjust for that in your
see for yourself how the color and tone of your lighting, as well as composite.
the local ambient light, changes.
Another popular trick being done by many night photographers
Rather than taking the time to estimate it on the fly during the today is the star trail stack. For example, itʼs possible to take ten
shoot, I leave the camera set on a baseline of 3800K, adjusting consecutive 4-minute exposures and combine them into a single
later when converting the RAW file. image with 40-minute-long star trails. There are many automated
software plug-ins for achieving this, but it can also be done easily in
Image Stacking Photoshop. Stack them as usual, and use “Lighten” instead of
Because youʼll be shooting with a tripod, you can do multiple “Normal” for the Blending Mode on each layer. This will allow only
captures with identical framing and exposure–yet each will the lighter part of either layer to be seen, making the star trails from
have different light painting, cloud and star movement. Some may each layer pop out of the sky. There must be no elapsed time
have cars or aircraft leaving trails of light through the frame. Image between the exposures; even a few seconds can leave gaps in
stacking allows you to easily make composites, by taking sections the trails. You can use a timer remote that will allow you to set up
from multiple images, layered in Photoshop. multiple consecutive exposures, or you can simply open and close
the lens manually for each image.
Open each image in Photoshop, and simply drag-and-drop one
image on top of another (while holding the shift-key, so theyʼll line WACOM Tablet
up perfectly) and youʼll end up with one file that has multiple Since the late ʻ90s Iʼve used a series of WACOM pen tablets
images on separate layers. Using basic layer-masking instead of a mouse. I currently work with a 6x9 Graphire4 thatʼs a
techniques, you can erase sections of the upper layers to let the few years old. The intuitive nature of holding and drawing with a
lower ones show. This will allow you to composite a good left half pen and its pressure sensitivity make it invaluable for drawn layer
of the image with a good right, together with a sky from that one masking and erasing. The pen takes a day or two to get used to,
frame that has an airplane flying through that perfectly suits the but I quickly became so comfortable with it that I havenʼt used a
composition. The potential here is almost unlimited, provided mouse for doing anything on the computer for over 15 years.
youʼve got the basic images to work with.
Wacomʼs Bamboo and Intuos tablets are also perfect for this type
This technique is also useful for DOF Composites. What if youʼre of use. Itʼs all about the size. Iʼve found the 6x9 format fits
shooting a very close up subject, yet you want the stars in the conveniently in my workspace and its relatively small working area
background, at infinity, to also be in focus? A 2-feet-to-infinity DOF suits my ergonomics perfectly.
is impossible at f/8–something will be out of focus. This dilemma
can be easily remedied by making one exposure focused on the
near subject, and another refocused on infinity. The two exposures
can then be composited in Photoshop for unlimited depth of field.
23
Depth of Field Composite Sample:

The final image (4) was constructed from two exposures, 1 and 2 above.
Image 1 is a 4-minute exposure, focused on ∞, while image 2 is a 2-minute
exposure, focused on the dashboard. Image 1 was added to image 2 as a
new layer (just drag and drop it, holding the shift key).
In image 3, the background layer (original image 2) is hidden on the layers

palette (seen at the green arrow on the right–click the “eye” icon to turn a
layerʼs visibility on and off–the checkered pattern signifies transparency). This
allows you to see that I erased the out-of-focus, close up sections of image 1
on the upper layer. I kept the “foot” gas pedal from the upper image because
the warmer version balanced with the rest of the image better.
Note how some of the erased edges are crisp, some are feathered–it all
depends on the requirements of that particular spot. If youʼre doing tight detail
work, use a small brush size and zoom into the area youʼre working on.
Image 4 is the finished composite with both layers visible.

24
Exposure Compositing
Sample:
The lighting in this dry dock was very bright
and uneven, making it impossible to get a
properly exposed image of everything in a
single shot. To balance the light, I started with
a 4 second exposure (3) used as the base
image. I combined it with a lighter 8 second
exposure (2) for the ground shadows, and an
even lighter 20 second exposure (1) for the tip
of the stern and the lucky shower of welding
sparks that fell during that exposure.
I simply erased the parts of the layers I wanted to get rid of, but many people
use layer masking to achieve the same results.
This was shot at f/16 to enhance the diffraction spikes in that big spotlight. No
added light was required here–the place was lit up like a stadium.
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The lens flare orbs were also cloned out, and the final image received a
considerable counter-clockwise crop/rotation to level the horizon.
Star Trail Stack
Light Painted Sample:
Night Photography: The “Lost America” Technique Troy Paiva
The final image (6) was constructed from a stack of five

consecutive captures, shown below. Each image was a 4
minute exposure, yielding 20 minute star trails. Thereʼs
less than 1 elapsed second between each shot–to avoid
gaps in the trails.
After stacking them, I set each layer to “Lighten” in the

Layer Blending Mode, as shown by the green arrow. This
allows only the lighter pixels on that layer to show, making
the stars pop out of the sky.
Note in the layers pallet that I erased the bottom half of

each of the upper images. I did this to prevent any failed
light painting attempts (1), or moving moon-shadows, from
overriding the light painted version (5) on the background
layer in the final image.
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Some owners will refuse outright, saying “My insurance wonʼt cover
Locations you. If you get hurt, Iʼm liable.” The best way to counter this is to
The most frequent question people ask me is “How on earth did have your own insurance. A $1,000,000 rider for photographers
you get in there to shoot?” A lot of the time itʼs as simple as costs about $500 a year. If having a policy means the difference in
walking right in. A surprising number of the locations I shoot are obtaining access to a prized location or not, itʼs a smarter
just wide open. No fences, no gates, no security–you can just walk investment for taking better pictures than that new lens youʼve
right in and start shooting. been thinking about.
When scouting a secure location, it can be a matter of simply Having permission is a much easier way to approach location work.
asking the owner, caretaker or property manager for permission to It allows you to relax and concentrate on taking pictures. You donʼt
shoot the site. Telling them that youʼre “taking pictures at night” will have to suppress your lights, especially important if youʼre a light
usually just confuse them, but showing them how interesting you painter. Plus you can publish the images later without worrying
can make the site look is a huge selling point. Thumb through your about angry property owners threatening to sue you.
sample prints while explaining about time-exposures, star trails,
cloud movement and light painting. More often than not, after Sometimes you can just walk right in because thereʼs no one
seeing the work, theyʼll say “Wow!” and give you the run of the available to contact in a remote location. The increased thrill of
place. trespassing like this is undeniable, but you can open yourself up to
all kinds of problems and dangers. Be prepared for insects and
If theyʼre not present on site while youʼre shooting, verbal vermin. Snakes, skunks, bats and a variety of poisonous spiders
permission may not be enough. Make sure you get their business can be found in many of these locations. Assume theyʼre there,
card or even a signed note saying youʼre supposed to be there. I even if you don't see them. Sometimes youʼll run across other
once had a sheriff catch me in a highly secure location. He was trespassers. Generally, they should be avoided. Salvagers tearing
ready to arrest me on the spot until I produced the site managerʼs down walls to steal the copper wiring have a lot to lose if they get
business card. The officer called her at midnight to make sure I caught by police, so theyʼre distrustful of anyone and can become
had permission. She wasnʼt thrilled about getting the call, but it aggressive when cornered. Remember, your gear is worth a lot
saved me from taking a ride downtown in the back seat of a police more than any metal theyʼre stealing, so you should always remain
car. aware of your surroundings and keep your equipment and bags/
packs where you can see them. Partying teenagers can come in
Some owners may require further convincing. Offer them prints all varieties: most are harmless, just drinking beer and legend
from your shoot of their location, and make sure you deliver on that tripping, but others may be hardcore tweakers intent on mayhem
promise. Iʼve even used a 12-pack of beer as an ice-breaker. Itʼs and destruction. Being a Ninja night photographer, you should
all in your attitude. Make sure they understand your motives for sense anyone else long before they see you. Your best option if
shooting their site; play the “I love the history and atmosphere of you run across anyone in an abandoned site is to play ninja and
your location” card. Tell them youʼre an “artist that wants to capture melt into the shadows, slipping away unseen.
the soul of the place.” Be upbeat, personable and excited about
the prospect of shooting there. A positive attitude can be infectious.
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If you get caught trespassing by security or the police, be friendly Itʼs been close though. Iʼve had crazy desert rat property owners
and contrite. Trespassing without intent to cause harm is normally scream at me to get off their land while racking a shotgun. If you
a misdemeanor in most states and if you play nice, youʼll be let off get rousted, the best thing you can do is take your lumps, say “Yes
with a warning. Donʼt run. If you make them chase you, youʼre sir” a lot and minimize the damage. If they tell you to leave, donʼt
only admitting guilt and theyʼll hate you for making them sweat. If argue or whine, just go. Thereʼs always another picture to be made
they catch you, nothing you can do from that point on will make just down the road.
them treat you well. Authorities generally assume the worst,
automatically labeling you as a thief or vandal, so there can be a lot
of angst on their part at first. Disarm them by saying “Hello! Iʼm
just a photographer.” in a friendly way. Act like a pro and theyʼll
treat you like one. Talking back or copping an attitude is another
sure-fire way to elevate the level of hassle. Break out your
samples and sell them on the concept of night shooting as if you
were talking to the property owner. Make sure they see your gear
and understand that youʼre not a salvager or vandal. They may
want to go through your bag or pockets. Let them, but make sure
you donʼt have incriminating items like souvenirs from the site, tools
that can be used for breaking & entering, spray paint or weapons.
If they find contraband, expect a long night.
Understand what kind of site youʼre entering. Get caught

trespassing in some locations, like functioning industrial or
transportation centers, and youʼve earned a guaranteed trip
downtown and a day in court. It can literally become “A Federal
Case” and wind up costing you thousands of dollars in fines with Blackbird
the added possibility of jail time. Under no circumstances should Lockheed SR-71, Castle Air Museum, Atwater, California. 5/19/2008
you trespass on active military bases or other secure federal sites. 12:15 AM, Canon 20D, f/5.6, ISO 100, 56 seconds, 3800K.
Natural Stinger Streamlight, full moon and ambient back-light from the
Iʼve personally been caught trespassing countless times, by all highway. Shooting into the shadows of a matte black subject like this
kinds of authorities, from minimum wage security guards to federal requires a lot of strong light to get any details to show. I really had to pour
agents like the Border Patrol, and have never been cited or it on from close range, but I only hit a few details– just enough to define the
arrested. Part of it is luck, but itʼs also because Iʼm using basic aircraft. I left most of the frame dark, using the angular silhouette to
enhance the sceneʼs mood and atmosphere.
human engineering skills to convince them that Iʼm just a harmless
oddball artist.
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Beyond Technique like, break it down and figure out how the lighting was done.
Photography is considered one of the most technical of the arts. It Duplicate the effect yourself. Put your own spin on it. Combine it
requires complex machines, powerful computers, chemical with something else. Unravel, reconstruct, create, invent.
processes and mathematical formulas. On the surface,
photography seems to be a pure science. But adding the light Eventually youʼll get to the point where you can previsualize your
painted, time exposure, night element changes everything. lighting. Youʼll walk up to a subject and just know what part to light
Capturing a block of time that humans can actually comprehend and how to light it. Youʼll be able to predict the fall of shadows from
changes the story that a single frame image can tell. The your light painting and where your light will overlap. Youʼll see how
randomness that can happen in a 4-minute exposure brings in the shotʼs lit inside your head before you even do it. Thatʼs when
spontaneity and chance, as moving stars, trees, clouds, cars and youʼre working with intention, doing consistent work without just
aircraft are etched into the image. The artist running around adding relying on luck and happy accidents to make good images.
light as the exposure burns in humanizes it. The most random thing
in night photography, in all photography, is you, the artist and what But mastering technique and working with intention is only half of
you bring to the moment. While all the technical rules still apply, the equation. Even the best technique can only take you so far.
this type of photography also gives an artist a lot of room to Moving beyond technique is what separates the artist from the
experiment and create, balancing the work between heart and technician.
head.
Fully manual night photography–with added light, is not organically
Give yourself some time. Surrender to the idea that itʼs going to intuitive like drawing or painting. Itʼs easy to get caught up in
take a lot of practice and experimentation before you can develop thinking about all the mechanical and mathematical aspects of the
your own look and style. Set up in your basement or garage, process, rooting you in that reality: a very uncreative, rules-based
anyplace where you can make it dark, and practice your light headspace. If youʼre fretting over technical minutia in your head,
painting skills. Shoot anything: your car, your bicycle, the water you canʼt get lost in the image creation process. The more you
heater. Over-light them so thereʼs strobe pops from a dozen think and plan, trying to create, the more likely creation will elude
different directions, under-light them so that the frame is 90% you. The less thinking and planning and fussing, the more relaxed
black. Lots of color, combined colors, no color. Back-light, side- and natural your work will be. Itʼs like a pianist playing a song
light, top-light. Use gobos and snoots. Light the background comprised of thousands of notes without sheet music: if they have
instead of the subject. Try everything. Shoot hundreds of frames. to think about every note, they wonʼt get very far. They have to turn
If you donʼt like the image, no one ever has to see it, and youʼll off the conscious part of their mind and just let it flow. This kind of
eventually delete almost all of them anyway. But you have to take photography is no different.
those bad pictures before you can take good ones–so do it in the
comfort of your own home before you head out to a difficult location Art doesnʼt come from the artist, it comes through the artist. The
where youʼll want to get it right the first time. flow that comes through someone who has mastered their
technique so well that they can use it without their own thoughts
Another way to get better is to deconstruct your favorite images. If blocking it . . . that's when the real magic happens.
you see a shot online, or a in a magazine, or movie that you really
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Iʼve talked about this at great length with other artists and
theologians. That last step–the “turning-off-the-brain” part–is the
hardest step for many people to take. Some equate it with
Godhead, meditation or even mental illness, and while I can agree
to aspects of all those, it goes even beyond than that.
Ultimately though, the first thing you need to do is get out there and
stretch your comfort zone. It wonʼt take long to see how the
visceral impact of the night photography experience can change
your life . . . just as it changed mine.
The Altar to 18-Wheels

Fernley, Nevada. 10/12/2011 4:48 AM, Canon 60D, f/11, ISO 200, 500+
seconds (x3) 3800K.
The abandoned “Truck Inn” truck stop sign, made from a real semi, alongside
Interstate 80, east of Reno. Available full moon and highway lights only. Three
stacked 8+ minute exposures, for about 25-minute star trails. Shot in the last
hour before dawn, I had to slip through a gap in the fence to gain this vantage
point. The Zen-like experience of watching the owls that live in this thing hunt
for prey in the weeds around me–while the image slowly burns in and the stars
crawl across the sky–it encapsulates everything that I love about night
photography.
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31
Hooded Eyes
The Big M, Williams, California. 9/4/2007 8:57 PM
Canon 20D, f/5.6, ISO 100, 113 seconds, 5000K
Cars have natural symmetry. When I shoot them from the front like this, I like to play up that
symmetry by setting up the shot right down the centerline of the hood. Use the license plate,
hood ornament and rear view mirror to line it up perfectly. If youʼre off even a few inches, it will
just look like you tried to shoot it down the center and missed. I used a red LED flashlight
symmetrically as well, from the same height, distance and time (about 5 seconds) on both sides.
I used a snooted LED flashlight on the headlights for a few seconds each, from a distance that
made its area of luminance only cover the bulbs. Their LED-coolness offsets the heat in the rest
of the image. Since this car had no driverʼs seat, I was able to hold a green-gelled strobe in its
place, pointed up. It projected a shadow of the steering wheel onto the dirt-covered windshield.
The lens was set to its widest setting (12mm) to enhance the size of the grille and make the
windshield seem even further away. The underexposure and close-to-daylight WB setting of
5000K allowed the distant sodium vapor-lit clouds to glow like a warm sunset, even though this
was long after twilight and facing south. A more evenly-lit version of the lower bumper from a
different exposure was composited onto the base image. This is a 1958 Chrysler, in storage at
The Big M auto dismantlers.
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33
Eyebrow Scar
Pearsonville Junkyard, California. 3/27/2010 1:09 AM
Canon 20D, f/5.6, ISO 100, 120/240 seconds, 3500K
If you break away from perfect symmetry, make your intentions clear. Line up on the center
perfectly, or line up far enough off center so that itʼs obvious you didnʼt mean to be on center.
This junkyard 1959 Buick was lined up on the convergence of the headlight, roofline and
antenna. I was also conscious of camera height and how the line of mountains breaks right into
the corners of the fenders. The headlights were snooted like the previous shot, but with a
warmer AA Maglite this time, offsetting the predominantly blue 3800K WB cast of the image.
The grille was lit indirectly, by bouncing a red LED flashlight off the ground outside the frame.
The red light could barely be seen on the car with the naked eye, but leaving it on for about a
minute gives its glow a chance to accumulate softly. I was careful to place the light so it would
have its hot spot reflection accent the dent in the chrome above the grille.
This is a DOF composite. The car was done in a 120 second exposure, tightly focused on the
grille. I let a second shot, focused on infinity, run for 240 seconds, and they were composited
together in Photoshop.
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Diesel Number 5
Schurz, Nevada. 7/23/2010 3:18 AM
The strong verticals of this abandoned pump-

island, in the vast horizontal Nevada landscape,
are what caught my eye here. I composed the
shot so the pump-head just broke the horizon,
with the camera pointed nose-down sufficiently
to splay the verticals slightly, giving them some
dynamics. Taking advantage of the wide-angle
lens, I pressed the light pole and hose nozzle to
the edges of the frame.
I knelt behind the pump to do a low-powered,

red-gelled strobe pop through it, being careful to
shield the light source behind the pump guts.
The strobe was set to its widest diffusion angle,
and I was very close, which made the ground
shadows splay. I then kissed the front facing
and ground with a lime-gelled LED from camera
left, just enough to show the details in the
shadows created by the red strobe. I also used
a snooted LED flashlight from camera right on
the nozzle, spotlighting this small detail that tells
the backstory of this location.
Access here was easy: in the middle of

nowhere, in the middle of the night, just park the
car and get to work.
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36
Meat X-Ray
Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, Oakland, California. 9/15/2009 8:48PM
Canon 20D, f/8, ISO 100, 39 seconds, 6100K
This was shot in the morgue of an abandoned hospital. The room was almost entirely gutted,
and the floor was covered with an inch of dirty water. Deep in the bowels of the building, it was
as dark as dark can get.
This image evolved from experimenting with shining my flashlight into the light boxes. When I
saw the camera was also capturing my arm in the glow, I set up to do this self-portrait.
I stood very still, about 6 inches from the panels. I had an LED flashlight in my left hand, placed
it against the panel, turned it on for 3 seconds and turned it off. That lit only the left panel, my
left arm and face. Without moving my head, I switched hands with the light. I then lit the center
panel, from behind my head for 3 seconds, silhouetting my face. Because it's behind my head,
you can't see my hand or the light-source, only its glow. I then slid my right hand to the right
panel, lighting it the same way I did the first, catching the back half of my head and right arm.
Then I stepped away and lit the surrounding wall with the same flashlight, from 2 angles. Quickly
closing the lens, the whole thing took only 39 seconds.
In post I did a slight perspective adjustment and crop to square things up. A little dodge and
burn was required to balance the lighting on the wall too.
I shot 4 other versions, but this one, the first try, was the best. It was difficult to keep my head
still enough as I moved the light from panel to panel.
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38
Morgue Drawers
Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, Oakland, California. 9/15/2009 10:24PM
Inside the morgue of Oak Knoll Naval hospital. Closed in 1996, this high-rise building was
imploded in 2011. For a short time in 2009 there was no security, and the fence was Swiss
cheese.
I backed into the corner of this tiny room and pulled the drawers out until they filled the
composition. I used a red-gelled, low-powered strobe, angled down from the upper right to fill
the room–conscious of keeping the drawer shadows just inside the frame. I used a few seconds
of AA Maglite to add the golden glow on the end of the drawers, which popped them off the red
background.
From this side, the drawers open into the lab, on the other side, into the loading dock. I cut
through the offices to illuminate the insides of the cabinets from the far side. There are several
pops of blue-gelled strobe, also from a high angle, from just outside the cameraʼs view. Aside
from the obvious “chilly refrigerated blue” effect inside the meat lockers, I chose this cool color to
contrast with the hot exterior colors.
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N8154M
Tonopah, Nevada. 7/23/2010 11:47PM
This parted-out and chewed up Cessna Skylane

is hidden behind a derelict WWII-era hangar at
the Tonopah airport. The back half of the plane
was in deep shade, yet everything else was
brilliantly lit by full moonlight. The trick here was
to put enough light on the back of the plane so
that it blended comfortably with the moonlit front
half.
Thereʼs a few seconds of LED flashlight down

the right side (from just outside the frame,
beyond the front of the plane), as well as
underneath (from the far side of the fuselage). I
used just enough light to show the planeʼs form,
allowing the ground to be lighter than the
fuselage where they transition. I also used a red
LED flashlight from camera left on the smashed
tail with a shallow enough angle that it didnʼt
shine down the right side of the plane. One
lime-gelled strobe pop, inside the cockpit from
the far side, rounded out the lighting.
That diagonal line in the center of the sky,

running perpendicular to the star trails, is the
International Space Station passing through–
reflecting the full moonʼs light.
40
41
Monte Carlo Moonrise
Pearsonville Junkyard, California. 10/4/2009 7:42PM
Capturing the rising moon requires working quickly–it moves its own diameter about every ten
minutes. This was set up just as the moon was cresting enough to compose with, then I quickly
opened the lens, and the moon rose into the shot. I had one chance to get it right.
This Chevy Monte Carlo was lit with a lime- and green-gelled Stinger. The intensity of that light
meant backing away about 50 feet, spreading its area of luminosity to cover the entire car
without moving it. This gave a smooth, even look to the light it cast, gently blending from lime to
green. Note that I lit from a low, shallow angle and made sure to light the ground too, giving the
car a sense of place and weight. I also used a tumbleweed as a gobo to cast a shadow on the
rear deck and fender. The red interior was done with an LED pointed at the camera from the far
side of the car, blocked by the rear sail panel. I rotated it around inside the car from one spot so
the dirty glass would diffuse the light.
In post, I used the clone tool to tidy up some slight lens flare and get rid of a distracting point of
light on the horizon. There was a little dodging to pull details out of the moonlit background
areas as well.
42
El Matador Thinks
Pearsonville Junkyard, California. 3/28/2010 9:31 PM
Take advantage of clouds. If you see an interesting

formation, let it determine your ground subject and
framing. This 1974 AMC Matador, forgotten in an
abandoned junkyard, comes alive under these cartoon-
thought-bubble-shaped lenticular clouds. Without them, I
never would have shot this car, from this angle, at this
moment. When working with clouds, be spontaneous
enough to incorporate them into your composition before
they change. The moment will be fleeting.
Thereʼs a little natural AA Maglite on the blowing weeds

and brake drum. With the back of the car in deep shade,
I used a snooted red LED flashlight on the taillights.
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44
Hereby Discharged
Paulʼs Junkyard, Lancaster, California. 9/9/2011 9:07 PM
Technically speaking, lighting is easy. Like working with clouds, lightning storms are constantly
evolving–ebbing and flowing and moving across the terrain. If you see that the storm is moving,
try to lead it so it moves into the shot. Then lock the lens open and hope you get a few bolts.
Lightning can be rhythmic, so counting the seconds between the strikes can sometimes give you
a pretty good estimation for when the next one will happen–but for me, they seem to always
happen right after I close the lens. Iʼve only been lucky to get well placed bolts like this a few
times over the years.
This is a 3+ minute exposure with the full moon behind clouds most of the time. The lack of
consistent moonlight meant I had to add my own light. This was four red and three blue 1/4-
power strobe pops.
I doubled up on the lightning in post, compositing in a couple of extra bolts from a second
exposure.
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Black Widow Snackbar
Yermo, California. 10/26/2007 10:53 PM
This roadside stand in Yermo, California has

been abandoned for decades. Iʼd meant to
shoot it for years and was finally in the right
place at the right time.
I set up to do my first shot, knowing a yellow-

gelled strobe pop inside would balance with
those distant sodium vapor streetlights. When
I walked though the doorway, I felt a tugging at
my ankle and up across my shoulder. I knew
immediately it was a big web. Shivering with
revulsion, I quickly did one flash-pop,
staggered outside, and out of pure reflex,
closed the lens. Shining a flashlight on my leg,
I found a Black Widow as big as my thumb
making its way up my pant-leg. A quick flick
and stomp, and it was over, but my skin still
crawls when I think about it.
While I was busy looking for more spiders on

my body, the clouds closed in, so I wasnʼt able
to get a better, longer exposure. I used
Photoshop to mask the yellow-lit interior and
lightened the rest of the scene about a stop. It
made some noise pop out of the sky, but it
saved the image.
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47
Look Bird
North Edwards, California. 11/19/2010 12:58 AM
This Mojave Desert gas station on Highway 58 has been abandoned since the 1980s. Iʼve shot
it at night several times since the early ʼ90s. On this cold winter night, heavy storm clouds boiled
over the nearby Tehachapi Mountains, making this the perfect moment to hop off the highway
and take another stab at it. Shooting into a strong wind, I had to keep my tripod as low and
locked down as possible. I knew I had to work quickly–those clouds were coming fast. And sure
enough, less than 20 minutes later, the sky went completely opaque, and it started to rain.
The underside of the canopy and interior were lit with red-gelled strobe pops. It was only when I
looked at the exposure on the back of the camera that I saw that I had inadvertently framed and
lit the “Look Bird” graffiti on the inside wall through the broken window. This was the first and
only shot I did from this angle, and this image is pretty much untouched, straight out of the
camera.
Sometimes itʼs better to be lucky than good.
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In The Web
Fort Ord Army Base, Monterey, California. 1/1/2007
7:44 PM, Canon 20D, f/5.6, ISO 100, 99 seconds, 5500K
This was shot in total darkness, inside a heavy industries

building on a closed military base. Getting in here was
relatively easy, the fence just needed to be walked
around and the building discretely hiked into from the
rear, away from the road. Always look for a back way in.
I took advantage of this chain-link fenced room to create

interesting shadow patterns on the walls, enhancing the
strong diagonals in the yellow and black striping. It was
done by popping a single green-gelled strobe burst from
the right, through the fence, freezing its shadow
throughout the room. Then I used a touch of red LED
flashlight to add some color to the crossed shadow above
the door, but not enough to overpower the green strobe.
Next, I walked into the other room and used LED
flashlight from behind the wall on the right to make the
striped column visible in the darkness–giving the scene
more depth–spiraling your eye into its center.
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50
Ghost On Rails
Oakamoor Siding, England. 6/4/2009 3:46 AM
Wrapped in a polyethylene tarp and put in storage in a British Rail graveyard, this rusty old
passenger car sat for so long that the plastic decayed into tatters. It was a simple matter to light
down the sides of the car from both sides with an LED flashlight for a few seconds, using
shallow angles to pull out the texture and folds. It also captured the blurred movement of the
wisps fluttering in the breeze. The car was also lit from the inside with several pops of blue-
gelled strobe.
The unusually high WB here (8000K) neutralized the blue-cast of the LED and intensified the
sky, lit red-orange from a combination of sodium vapor lights bouncing off the clouds (it was
lightly raining during this shoot) and the early, northern England, summer sunrise.
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Chickasaw Knockoff
Long Marston, England. 6/5/2009 3:02 AM
I loved the weathering on this forlorn Westland Whirlwind,

forever grounded in the rainy English Midlands. I had to
kick down waist-high, soaking wet weeds just to get the
tripod feet to even touch the ground. I positioned it under
the rotor blade to enhance the composition by leading
your eyes diagonally into the frame.
With a yellow helicopter against an orange, sodium

vapor-lit sky, I knew I needed a contrasting cool color for
my key lighting. Opting for a strobe with a blue gel, I
worked from inside the cockpit, being careful to get some
light on the underside of the rotor blade. I also hit the
body and weeds with an un-gelled LED flashlight, but
only lightly, showing just enough detail to allow your
imagination to fill in the blanks. I wanted to keep it dark
overall so that the logo and windows would be the center
of attention, leading your eye into the vortex created by
the rotor blades against the sky.
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53
Puckersmash
The Big M, Williams, California. 4/7/2009 11:14 PM
This light tan1958 Buick station wagon was stored in total darkness–all the lighting was added.
The neutral color had minimal impact on the light painting, so I was able to get the full effect
from using these intense colors. Lit with lime-gelled LED from the right and a red LED from the
left, I held it close to the car body to maximize its surface texture. I lit the glass from the left and
right with a natural LED, but from inside the car to not wash out the red- and lime-lit body.
Again, I used a shallow angle here to pull out the cracks and dirt on the glass. I also made sure
to light the tire in the back seat–the way it leans perpendicular to the roof post is critical for the
compositionʼs tension and dynamics. Each added light element lasted just a few seconds.
The way the roof and body lines intersect is an interesting stylistic feature on these mid-ʼ50s GM
cars. I took advantage of this elegant interlocking arch design to provide the centerpiece of the
composition, juxtaposing them against the jagged lines of the two kinds of broken glass.
54
Waiting for the Wave
Rock-A-Hoola Water Park, Lake Dolores,
California. 5/27/2010 10:56 PM
Canon 20D, f/5.6, ISO 100, 120 seconds,
5500K
The Rock-A-Hoola Water Park opened to the

public in 1998 along Interstate 15 near
Barstow. The first time I passed it, I knew it
would be abandoned someday, and Iʼd get to
shoot it. Sure enough, it closed in 2004, and
by 2010 it had developed a nice patina and
was ready for me. Less than a year after
shooting it, scrappers and vandals had gone
a long way towards destroying the site.
Abandoned locations have short lives. When
you see them, donʼt wait–shoot them now.
With the moon still rising behind the building,

this entire scene was in deep shade. While
you could see a few details, it was nothing
but a black silhouette to the camera.
Because the building was so colorful to
begin with, I used natural light on it, letting
the strong purples and greens stand on their
own. I added light to the entire front, but did
it unevenly, so that your eye would only
travel to the parts I wanted your eye to travel
to. Pulling out the signage was the key. I
blasted the chair with a red-gelled strobe
pop from inside the building–but from a low
angle, letting its long shadow stretch out of
the frame. I used a little LED flashlight to fill
that cast shadow and show the front of the
chair as well.
Yes, I moved the chair to this spot from

inside the building. While some
photographers refuse to move anything, Iʼll
take advantage of whatever the site 55
provides to advance the story.
56
Heavy Seas
Pearsonville, California. 3/8/2009 12:31 AM
When I first started doing night photography, I had a tendency to shoot at crooked “1960s
Batman TV series” angles like this all the time. It got to be so predictable in the early ʼ90s that I
had to force myself to stop doing it.
Thanks to a workshop student who reminded me that I should “never say never,” I went back to
doing it occasionally–to artificially add some dynamics to a static-feeling scene. Itʼs all about
intention. If youʼre going to shoot at an angle, make sure itʼs at enough of an angle that itʼs
obvious you did it on purpose. Slightly crooked horizons just look like you tried to get it
straight . . . and missed. Had I framed this perfectly level, the right angles in the composition
would make it appear stiff and rigid. I like the turbulence the tilt adds to the story here.
This was a bitterly cold and windy night on the east side of the Sierra Nevada range. I loved the
way the frayed flag was blowing in the wind and knew that itʼs motion would blur over the course
of the 2-minute exposure. I lit the interior of the cab with lime-gelled LED and also snooted the
“Insured by Smith and Wesson” sticker with a tiny bit of natural LED.
57
58
Me Train Running Low On Soul Coal
Niles Train Museum, California. 2/16/2008 10:21 PM
The centerpiece of the Niles Train museum, this 1920s steam locomotive had been out on the
rails that same afternoon. Even several hours after shutting down, the boilers still hissed and
spat steam into the night sky. I used a red-gelled Stinger flashlight to add light to the steam as it
billowed from the relief valves, catching the movement as a blur. The yellow light was from the
interior of a restored passenger car parked on an adjacent track. I used a high WB setting here
to enhance the heat in the reds and yellows.
Access here was easy–I just asked. The curators were as fascinated by the idea of light-painted
night photography as I was by their locomotive.
59
The Purple Pumpkin
Kincaid, Nevada. 6/15/2011 1:58 AM
Canon 60D, f/8, ISO 200, 240 seconds (x3),
5300K
What caught my eye here were the rounded

shapes piled on top of rounded shapes, made
of light colored metal in deep shade. It was
just begging to be light painted. The separate
planes of the open doors gave me the
opportunity to layer my lighting, giving this
wide-open desert scene the perception of
greater depth. Note how the window frame
on the driverʼs door and the object inside it,
overlap the horizon to provide even more
visual tension to the composition.
This was lit with a purple-gelled LED flashlight

from outside the frame on both sides. It took
a few tries to get the coverage even. The red
was done with an LED flashlight, rotated in
place where the rear view mirror would be
while using the truckʼs roof to screen it from
the camera.
This is a stack of three 4-minute exposures,

yielding 12-minute star trails.
60
61
Strut
While teaching the final night of a workshop in October 2008, I saw a student off in the distance,
light-painting a pile of tires and suspension parts. When his light inadvertently cast this shadow
on the trailer about 50 yards from where he was shooting, I knew I needed to capture this–but
my flashlight batteries failed as I was setting it up. During the March 2009 workshop, I made
sure to recreate it.
The tire and strut assembly is off camera to the left, 50 yards from the trailer. I set a red-gelled
Stinger on a rock 100 yards from the trailer, with the tire and strut halfway between. By setting it
down, it worked like a spotlight, keeping the shadow nice and crisp. The long distances–of the
light to the strut and the strut to the trailer–kept the shadow large. I had a student set up his
camera next to mine so weʼd both get the shot. I also put him to work, lighting the side of the
trailer from off camera right using a warm-toned xenon flashlight while I tended to the red light,
100 yards away. Teaming up like this can make complicated shots much simpler.
62
Third Floor Dungeon
Fort Ord Army Base, Monterey, California. 2/7/2009 12:03
AM, Canon 20D, f/5.6, ISO 100, 120 seconds, 3800K
A shaft of moonlight falls through a rooftop access hole in

a forgotten tactical military training structure, on a
decommissioned Army base. It had rained that day, and
there was still a puddle below the opening. I moved the
chair to this spot and lit it with red LED flashlight from both
sides. I used half as much light on the right side as the
left, to gently fill the shadow created by the stronger light
with the same color. The shadow is still defined, but not
totally black. Itʼs important to strike a delicate balance
and be subtle in situations like this.
I was after a bloody, all-red look, especially in the puddle,

so it was important to not use other colors here. Equally
as important was leaving most of the frame black, to keep
the viewerʼs eye leading from the skylight down to the
chair without distraction. Another critical element here is
the star trail in the skylight, keeping the night context
alive.
63
64
Constellation Montclair
Another image shot during a workshop. One of my students brought a green laser pointer with a
lens on it that scatters the beam into hundreds of points of light. It was dirty, causing the strange
blurring and trails you can see between the dots. As soon as I saw this thing in operation, I
started searching for a white surface in shade on which to turn it loose. I taped the power button
in the on position and set it down on a rock about 25 feet away from the car, camera left. Then I
opened the lens and left the laser on for about 1 minute of this 4-minute exposure. The other 3
minutes were spent adding snooted red LED to the front wheel and a red-gelled strobe pop at
the windows from the far side of the car. Thereʼs also a little natural LED flashlight on the front
of the fender to help define its shape and texture. I was conscious of the distant streetlight,
placing it in the windows to partially block it and also let it diffuse into the dirty glass.
65
Travelers
The Big M, Williams, California. 2/27/2010 12:42 AM
This was shot late, on a cold winter night, under

miserable conditions. I was covered with mud and chilled
to the bone. Most of this scene was in deep shade, so I
knew I needed to tell the story with light, underexposing
overall to let the lit car and sign pop out of the dark
background.
I used an LED flashlight down the passenger side, from

the back of the car and just out of the frame. Getting
some light on the ground was important, to keep the car
from looking like it was just floating in black space and to
give the left edge of the frame some context. I crouched
behind the car and used the LED on the motel sign,
making sure to hit the further away top section a little
more than the closer lower section–so the whole sign
would look evenly lit. Coming ʻround to the front, I
popped a red-gelled strobe from where the engine used
to be and out through the grille. Thereʼs also a snooted
LED on the “M” logo and headlight. Note that I just
touched the empty headlight socket too–with just enough
light to catch a glimpse of the dead wires, but not so
much that it looked lit.
66
67
Eighty-Sixed
California. 3/20/2011 12:31 AM
The March 2011 full moon was stormy all over the West Coast, but I wasnʼt going to let that stop
me from shooting this amazing aircraft boneyard. While gearing up at the car in the total
darkness before the moon rose, a combination of gusting wind and an accidental bump knocked
my tripod over. The screw mount ripped right out of the bottom of the camera, and the lower
section of the body was sprung. It still took pictures, but I couldnʼt mount it on a tripod.
Rather than giving up, I shot 16 set ups that night with the camera gaffer's taped to the tripod. I
lost only one set up to camera movement the whole night. Unfortunately, the camera ended up
being a write off, but the real lesson here is to keep shooting. Donʼt let a difficult situation get
you down so much that you canʼt figure out a work-around for your problems. Many
photographers would have just slinked back to the motel with their tail between their legs, but I
turned it into a classic old-school, Lost America-style, junk-equipment, ghetto-kludge job.
This disassembled Korean War-era F-86 fighter was shot as a DOF composite, keeping both the
rear of the fuselage and the distant horizon in focus. The rear and side of the fuselage was lit
with LED flashlight, obliquely from both sides, to pull out the surface texture and reflections on
each surface. The canopy was lit with a red-gelled strobe popped from inside the cockpit. The
old, crazed plastic picked up the light perfectly.
68
Slack Jaw Spit Bridge
Alameda Naval Air Station, California. 6/30/2008
10:39 PM, Canon 20D, f/5.6, ISO 100, 26 seconds, 5300K
Hard to believe, but this old Naval hospital building was

just unlocked and wide open. I literally walked right in and
started shooting.
It never occurred to me that I would ever want to shoot

smashed dental exam lights, but the moment I saw these,
I knew I had to. I intentionally set up with the window
between the arms, the right one parallel to the frame and
the left covering it completely, but at a sharper angle,
using forced perspective to push the window into crazy
funhouse territory. I carried this theme further by using
lurid lime and red-gelled LED flashlight from opposite
sides to keep the light from overlapping. The spider web
required some extra light from several angles and some
dodging in post. The exposure was kept short because
the lights outside were very strong and I didnʼt want the
exterior to overpower the interior.
I returned to do more shooting in here the next night, and

the building was locked up tight.
69
70
Crawlinʼ From the Wreckage
Itʼs a challenge to shoot night portraits like this–when lighting with one source at a time. The
slightest sway or change of expression between flash pops will blur your subject and ruin the
shot. With hand-held sources, strobe is better than flashlight for shooting people because it
gives a burst of light that freezes movement.
One of my workshop students, Tor-Erik Bakke, was willing to climb into this rolled Impalaʼs gore-
covered interior and remain motionless, for the ten minutes it took to put this shot together. Try
to place your subject in a comfortable position where they can relax, and youʼll stand a much
better chance of getting them to be still. Sit them on something, or lean them against an
immobile object. Get the critical facial lighting done as quickly as possible, while they hold their
breath and freeze. After that they can relax enough to breathe and talk in the darkness while
you light the rest of the scene and the shot burns in.
All the lighting in this scene was done from only a couple of feet away, so I used very low-power
flash settings throughout. Thereʼs a 64th power white strobe pop through the windshield and
onto his face from beside the steering wheel. I quickly upped the flash power to 32nd and did a
blue-gelled pop from camera right, then rushed to the far side to do a red-gelled pop from
camera left. It was important to get those 3 pops done in less than 10 seconds–to minimize his
movement as much as possible. Then I hid behind him and did several more pops of lime-
gelled strobe into the interior through the side window.
The lime part of the windshield required a little dodge and the white part, a little burn, but thatʼs
about it for post-production on this. The real work happened in the field. It took four or five test
exposures–running around the car in circles, quickly popping flashes–before I was finally
satisfied with the lighting balance in this set up.
71
72
Goldie
The Big M, Williams, California. 7/5/2009 12:16 AM
Coming around a corner at The Big M yard, I came upon “Goldie,” the ownerʼs daily-driver 1957
Plymouth, casting this crazy film noir comic book shadow. This image needed to be all about
that, so I set the camera up at maximum height to look down on it and make it as large and
dominant as possible.
Thereʼs LED flashlight on the back of the car from off camera right, and then down the side, from
near the front and from off camera left–using a snoot to keep the light from being cast onto the
ground shadow or anything else in the scene. The intention was to balance the carʼs shady
driverʼs side and rear with the moonlight reflecting off the roof and trunk lid. I also hit the interior
with a few seconds of the LED, placed at the top of the windshield and screened from the
camera by the roof. Thereʼs a little light thrown into the shadow–just enough to show a tiny bit of
ground texture, but without taking away from its dark impact.
Cropped to square in Photoshop, I tucked the fin shadow into the lower left corner and
eliminated the sky entirely. This allowed the rest of the scene to go dark, creating a studio-shot
look, but outside, under moonlight.
Be prepared to take what the location offers at any given moment. I had no idea I was going to
shoot this until I saw it, but was flexible enough to be able to set up, design and take the shot
before the light and shadow changed.
73
74
Count Olafʼs Eyes
This 1960 Chrysler Imperial limo was modified for use as a prop in the Lemony Snicket movie.
This custom dashboard is utterly unlike anything Iʼve ever seen in a junkyard.
Because the back seat passenger area is huge in a limo like this, I had plenty of room to set the
tripod up and point the camera over the seat to get the driverʼs perspective. I took advantage of
my Canon 60Dʼs swivel screen and remained outside the car during the entire shooting and
previewing process.
Thereʼs lime-gelled LED pointed straight down from above the roof, onto the steering wheel,
seat and dash, as well as on the ceiling from camera left. Thereʼs also red LED from the left and
right onto various areas of the interior. From the front of the car, I shined a stationary LED
flashlight through the torn and hanging headliner 3 times, careful to space them pleasingly and
get the right amount of light through the perforations. I even had to adjust the rear view mirror to
reflect the headliner, so it didnʼt have any hot spots or distracting reflections. This was an
intensely complex set up–it took quite a few tries to get every element balanced and placed
properly.
75
76
The Search for Color
Death Valley Mine, Mojave Desert, California. 5/25/2010 11:44 PM
I added colored light here–lime-gelled LED flashlight in this case–to enhance the already
dominant greens and yellows of the lush spring plants, on this beautiful desert night. The scene
was washed with this light from both sides, onto the Joshua Tree and weeds from the right, and
onto the winch engine from the left. Note that I didnʼt overpower it–I just subtly gilded it with a
little color. I crouched behind the cylindrical tank in the center of the image and used a red-
gelled Stinger to hit the inside of the mine-head building, popping it off the sky.
This scene was several miles down a sandy track, 50 miles from the Interstate–far from
civilization. Californiaʼs high desert is dotted with abandoned sites like this. Theyʼre great fun
for a late night of photography–just you and the coyotes, howling at the moon.
77
78
The Wrong Side of the Interstate
Dunnigan, California. 3/09/2012 2:26 AM
Dunnigan is alive and well on the other side of the freeway, but here on the west side, itʼs a
ghost town. After 2AM like this, itʼs pretty likely that youʼll have the night to yourself, no matter
where you are. It really is the best time to work.
Thereʼs no added light here. Even though I was shooting into the shadow of the moon, there
were distant lights filtering in from almost every direction, balancing the overall light pretty well.
Worth noting here is that this was shot at f/16 for about 8 minutes. Extrapolated out to a more
typical f-stop for me, that would be about 2 minutes at f/8. But the more you stop down, the
larger the diffraction spikes from the streetlights. Since I was working them into the composition
instead of light painting, I went for the big spikes. I was mindful to place the lights so the spikes
would overlap some of the darker parts of the canopy to take advantage of the added contrast.
This lends a strange M.C. Escher-esque “background is closer than the foreground” effect.
There was some pretty strong contrast adjustments that needed to be done in post to balance
the lighting, especially in the brightly lit roadway area below the street lights. HDR in concept,
but hand crafted in execution.
79
80
Mos Eisley
The Trona Pinnacles, California. 4/22/2010 9:57 PM
Canon 20D, f/5.6, ISO 100, 480 seconds (x3), 3500K
Sometimes you just have to know when to leave well enough alone. Infinite landscapes like this
donʼt give you many opportunities to light paint, so just let them be. Thereʼs no added light here:
just moonlight, the lone camper in the middle distance, the laser-straight trail of a car driving the
dirt road out to the pinnacles and the glimmer of the Trona mining plants, 20 miles away.
This image is comprised of three 8-minute exposures (it was a very cold night, so exposures this
long were not outside the 20Dʼs capability), making for 24-minute star trails pin-wheeling around
Polaris.
Sitting in this surreal spot, motionless for a half-hour, was a wonderfully mind-bending
experience. As the title implies, you may as well be on another planet. Get out there and
experience it for yourself!
81
Acknowledgements
This book is dedicated to my brother Tom, who introduced me to
night photography.
And Ma, for all the direction and guidance.
Special thanks to Joe Reifer for helping me release my inner

teacher.
Many of the images in this book would not have been possible
without the companionship of Joe Reifer, Riki Feldman, Andy
Frazer, Tor-Erik Bakke, Hunter Luisi, Gabe Biderman, Bob Azzaro,
Johnny Nocturne, Mike Hows, Aaron Siladi, and all the students
that have taken my workshops. Cheers you guys!
Some of the images in this book could never have been created
without the access granted by David Pearson, Paul at Paulʼs
Junkyard, John at Big M Auto Dismantlers, Wes at the Niles
Railroad Museum, Mark at Aviation Warehouse and Mike at SFO.
The writing in this book would have been a lot clunkier without the
editorial help of Pappy Moore, Jeff Breitenstein, Joe Reifer and
Luke Lakatosh.
And thank YOU for buying and reading this book.

Have fun out there!
I love Jooolie.
Troy Paiva
Redwood City, California, April 2012
All images and writing in this book ©Troy Paiva / www.lostamerica.com.

No unauthorized reproduction!
82
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The Planet of Lost Luggage

The arrival of the first CMOS-sensored DSLRs around 2004

Three important new features opened up night shooting to the

1.No need to understand the reciprocity failure rates for each

2.Selective white balance adjustment in post-production,

My brother, Tom Paiva, was finishing his photography degree at the

Steve allowed me to audit a classroom lecture by Michael Kenna

Equipment Doesnʼt Matter

The early, cropped-sensor CMOS DSLRs (like the Canon 20D,

• Live View: While this isnʼt required, it has revolutionized close-up

More important than any trick features or the number of

Youʼll need a pack to carry these items. Many photographers

The Failed Mascot

I popped a red-gelled strobe in the footwell–straight up into the steering wheel–

Donʼt use your flashlight constantly. When you do need to use

Compose for the clouds. Moving clouds, smearing across the

When focusing on close up work in the dark, you can sometimes

You may need to go to 8 minutes or even longer. Shooting into

Working In Total Darkness

Donʼt Pick Up the Camera

If your subject has a strong natural color to begin with, consider

Depth of Field Composite Sample:

In image 3, the background layer (original image 2) is hidden on the layers

Image 4 is the finished composite with both layers visible.

The final image (6) was constructed from a stack of five

After stacking them, I set each layer to “Lighten” in the

Note in the layers pallet that I erased the bottom half of

Understand what kind of site youʼre entering. Get caught

The Altar to 18-Wheels

The strong verticals of this abandoned pump-

I knelt behind the pump to do a low-powered,

Access here was easy: in the middle of

This parted-out and chewed up Cessna Skylane

Thereʼs a few seconds of LED flashlight down

That diagonal line in the center of the sky,

Take advantage of clouds. If you see an interesting

Thereʼs a little natural AA Maglite on the blowing weeds

This roadside stand in Yermo, California has

I set up to do my first shot, knowing a yellow-

While I was busy looking for more spiders on

Sometimes itʼs better to be lucky than good.

This was shot in total darkness, inside a heavy industries

I took advantage of this chain-link fenced room to create

I loved the weathering on this forlorn Westland Whirlwind,

With a yellow helicopter against an orange, sodium

The Rock-A-Hoola Water Park opened to the

With the moon still rising behind the building,

Yes, I moved the chair to this spot from

What caught my eye here were the rounded

This was lit with a purple-gelled LED flashlight

This is a stack of three 4-minute exposures,

A shaft of moonlight falls through a rooftop access hole in

I was after a bloody, all-red look, especially in the puddle,

This was shot late, on a cold winter night, under

I used an LED flashlight down the passenger side, from

Hard to believe, but this old Naval hospital building was

It never occurred to me that I would ever want to shoot