Ben Willmore Discusses “Painting with Light”

Ben Willmore, one of the top Photoshop Guru's out there has an interesting video discussing how he "paints with light" on some of his images. Painting with light involves the photographer adding supplemental illumination to various parts of the scene to enhance the final result. The camera must be on a tripod and the exposure fairly long - like 30 seconds. During the exposure, the photographer moves through the scene adding light to the areas that need it. We used to do this quite a bit in our wedding photography when we wanted to photograph the whole ballroom before guests came in. The combination of digital photography and Photoshop make the technique less necessary for us these days, but it's still nice to have it in our creative arsenal. Ben's tools are a bit different - give his video a quick peek right here. You can also check out Ben's latest site - Where's Ben? - right here.