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Hey everyone, my name's Gabriel Biderman from National Parks at Night. And today, we're gonna talk about the wonderful world of light writing. But before we do, you wanna click on that subscribe button below, and that way, you can watch all the other night videos we've done in the series.
So what is light writing, and what's the difference between light painting and light writing? Now, in our previous video, we went in depth into light painting, which is taking any sort of light source—flashlight, flash, car headlamps—and using that light source and putting it into the scene, the light itself, okay? We use that to kind of either raise up some shadows or dark scenes, or create interesting light and shadows into the scene. But with light writing, we're gonna use these light sources, these tools, and generally, we're gonna write something like words, or we can draw something. And if you're artistically inclined at all and a good drawer, anything like that, boy, does light writing just open up a world of opportunity for you.
So how does light writing work? Well, first, we're gonna need a dark environment or a blank canvas, a dark blank canvas to write it. The easiest thing for you to do is to turn off all the lights, close all the drapes in your room, and voila. Even in the middle of the day, you've got that blank, dark canvas to now write on.
Now, you're gonna need a few tools, and let's talk about those first. First, obviously, you'll need a camera, and to be honest, with light writing, any camera will do. I generally don't recommend phones, but there are some phones that are getting better with long exposures built in. But you wanna have any kind of camera, and then as well, you'll need a tripod. With all things night photography, we need something sturdy to put the camera on. And then the next thing you'll need is a cable release. Now, I have here the Vello ShutterBoss cable release, which I use that a lot for time lapses and star trail stacking and stuff like that, but for light writing, you can easily use the simpler cable releases, the ones that just plug in and have an on-off button, or the ones that have infrared control and you can walk into the scene and click it when you're ready.
And then finally, and the most important thing you'll need, is a light source, and it can be anything out there. You know, the simple things that almost all of us have are flashlights, right? You could use those. Phones are great. Glow sticks, those are pretty simple and readily available. Sparklers, like I said, car lights. Anything that emits light can be a source of creativity for you to write with.
You know, we have those everyday ones that I've just shown that are available, but then now there are some really specialized tools that are being made specifically for light writing. Now, first off, you know, having some sort of light saber that you can use. This is light wands that you can put a flashlight at the bottom of this, and you can have different colors. And these are really cool for creating what I like to call wands or waves of light. So I use this. I like the collapsible design, so easy to bring with you. This plexiglass blade, where the light emits just along the sides right here. Again, plug a flashlight, and you can either use this by turning it on and off, or create some really interesting design with this or another interesting light wave with that. Fiber optics, and again, by putting a flashlight into this one right here, we can see that the light just comes out of the ends right here. And this is a really true light brush, where we can kind of really paint the light onto people. I like using this one for portraits and other objects to kind of just gently and literally brush light onto the scene. And then, you know, regarding a flashlight, having something that is a lower power. Something like a Maglite, which again, most people have Maglites. I have this little Gerber light, which again, just emits a little bit of light, so this is really easy to write with and doesn't blow the exposure. As something like this Coast flashlight, it's gonna be a little bit brighter. We have to kind of paint faster and be careful not to really shoot that light into the lens and get flare.
A couple other tools that are readily available out there are holiday lights. Using the holiday lights, and you can either spin these or hang these in different places to create different sorts of effects with these. These are super fun, and again, just put in some AA batteries, and away you go. There's lots of other little light writing tools and pens that you can use out there. Laser pointers, all that kind of stuff like that. So really, really fun to experiment with any light source out there, but then again, researching some of the experts and what they're creating, and have some fun with that.
Some other specialized tools are the Pixel Stick or the Magilight, and now these are like light bars that not only can emit different colors and color temperatures, but with a micro SD card, you can actually draw designs, put it into this card, and then as you are walking with the stick, it'll actually put the designs you made, those drawings, out into the scene. This right here, this is the Savage RGB light wand, and this is a really cool tool that you can basically dial in any RGB color. You can do color temperatures, if you just want a simple white light, you can do it slightly warm at 3200, and it goes up to 5500. You can control all this from your app, and this is a really, really fun tool to really draw and design some fun stuff with. And simple and easy to kind of bring with. It's battery powered, as well.
Now, steel wool has been used for light writing, typically being spun in whisks and creating these really interesting orbs that are very hairy, sparkly lights. What I'll say about steel wool is you have to be very careful. Unfortunately, a lot of incidents with steel wool where either the surrounding area, the grass, has been too dry, or it's been done on boats or other areas where it's caught on fire. So if you're gonna do the steel wool thing, make sure you're in a wet, damp area, something like doing it on the sand at the beach where you're not gonna catch or risk catching anything on fire with the steel wool.
All right, so let's go over some of the best settings for you to put your camera in to get the best results for light writing. First off, we're gonna set our ISO fairly low. Even if we're in a completely dark room, with light writing, the image is what we make into it. We're not really trying to reveal the information of the dark room. We're really wanting to reveal what we're writing into the scene. So let's go with a lower ISO, like something from 100 to 400. For an aperture setting, I generally start somewhere between 5.6 and F11, and the apertures are gonna be usually what I'm gonna move and adjust the most to control the brightness of the tools that I'm using. Shutter speed? If it's again, a dark room, I'll generally start with something like 15 to 30 seconds. And here's the major consideration: What are you writing? And how much time do you need to write or draw that into the scene? If it's something pretty elaborate, then you might need to be going two minutes or four minutes. If it's something quite simple, then you could probably get away with that 15 to 30 seconds.
Focus, now, as we've discussed in all the videos, focusing in the dark is tricky, so how can we solve this in the dark? Well, we can pre-focus. We can either hopefully either set a flashlight or one of the light sources into the scene, and that's gonna mark the spot where you are going to stand and do the writing. So then you'll go into your kit and go to your camera, press autofocus, focus that piece in the scene, and then switch it back to manual focus. Step into the scene, trigger that camera, pick up your tool, and start writing. That's sort of the best way, is to pre-focus in the scene, and that's gonna be where you're gonna stand. And you're gonna not go all over the place so much, but kinda stay in that parallel area so that you'll remain in focus. And then another friend, especially if you don't have the remote, or even if you do have the trigger, putting your camera on self-timer. Whether it's two seconds and it just gets you ready to get your tool ready, or whether you need 10 seconds, and then you're gonna walk into the scene with that tool. But using the self-timer function on your camera is gonna be key to giving you the best chance to get in the scene and get ready to write.
All right, let's talk about the top tips for light writing. First things first, you need to dress like a ninja. Hence the black fedora, right? But if you think about this. If you think you're gonna be using a light source to be doing some writing with, well, some of that might kick back. And if you're wearing a white shirt or khakis or any sort of light-colored clothing, the chance of you showing up in the scene or there being this sort of reflection of you is gonna be great.
We talked about the environment, so getting that, finding, or creating that dark environment for you to work in. You know, sometimes again, we could go out and we're doing some light writing into the scene, but be aware of where the street lights or where the bright parts of the scene are and working in the shadows, working in the areas that are dark are gonna give us a better chance for that light writing to read through.
Number three, using a low-power light source. Something, again, like this flashlight right here, which is probably about five lumens right here. Again, this will give us the time to write what we want to write better, and we can go at not a breakneck speed, whereas when using something like this, we're gonna have to draw really quick and it might lead to more hot spots in the scene.
Number four, getting your timing down. And again, practice before you even turn on the camera, so you can figure out what that shutter speed's gonna be. So I'll set up the camera, and then I'll go into the scene and start writing it out (murmurs) and again counting in the scene. So get that timing down, and that'll help gauge what shutter speed to put our camera at.
Tip number five, when writing words, you'll need to write the letters backwards. Now, for something like a W, that's gonna be easy, right? We just do this right here. But something for a P, which I see like this, I'm gonna have to write it the other way. I'm gonna have to write it backwards. So when you're gonna write out an elaborate word, whether it's "Happy Holidays" or "Love" or one of the other right words you're gonna write, make sure that whoever's writing knows how to write backwards. It can get a little confusing out there, but when you get it done, it's gonna read correctly on the camera.
Tip number six, when using the flashlight, make sure that you can either turn it on or off or, again, cover it with your hand or, again, that dark glove, so that you can have the breaks into the scene. It can be really tricky. I know some people, it's like that line drawing. They can use one line to draw the whole thing. But most of the time, especially when we're writing words or intricate designs, we'll want to be able to break it.
Tip number seven, apertures can control the brightness of the light writing in the scene. So if you're using the tool that you're using, if it is too dim and you can't turn up the power of the flashlight, then open up your apertures. If you're at F8, maybe go to 5.6 or F4. That'll let more of that light in. Ideally, we want it to be kind of a clean line and not something that's blowing out all over the place.
And finally, tip number eight, experiment and have fun. With light writing, the world of opportunity is opened up to you. There's nothing that makes you when you go to the back of the screen, and you're like, "Wow, that's cool. I created that." It's just, we're creating something out of nothing, and that's a lot of fun.
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So I recently led a night walk in Cuba with the Mystic Seminars and B&H, and it was a really cool and ended up being a less of a night walk, and more of a light writing walk. So first off, we were first shooting by the waterfront, and we can see there is just a lot of the street lights kind of eating into the scene. And this is using the Savage RGB light wand. And it's still picking up. It's bright enough for it to pick up, but as you can see, it just looks better in the darker area, so we kind of moved to this location using those best tips here. We moved to that location to find a darker canvas to paint on. So we went under one of the battlements there, and we were really gonna, I liked adding the sky into that information. I liked having the cannon up here, too. But this here, this dark area was the canvas to paint in. So first thing first, I took an ambient shot to kinda judge the ambient exposure, which really is the sky. And then that created a nice, dark area for us to draw in. So here was our first test, looking at designs, but when you're gonna do a night portrait with light writing, you also have to pop a flash. And that forever freezes and brings detail into that subject. So we used a Profoto A1. We had Leslie come in and do the drawing, and then we popped the flash. I said, "Hold still, we're gonna pop the flash." And that way, now the portrait is created and forever etched into the scene. So it's a balance of doing some light painting and light writing to create these really cool portraits. So we experimented with just different designs, and again, all the while popping the flash. I believe the flash was at 1/4 or 1/8 power and about 15 feet away. Any light source you bring into the scene is gonna be forever etched into it. So by turning it on and off, you can kind of create some really interesting designs.
But let's take a look at some other things. Now again, we can use any sort of light source in the scene, and the most common light source available to us, often especially in urban areas, are cars. And whether we're using the tail lights, the red lights from cars, or the front lights to create interesting light writing into the scene. So here we have. This is on top of the Brooklyn Bridge, and all the cars kind of coming into the scene, as well as we have the tribute to lights also kind of forever etching themselves into this image, as well. You know, when you're doing car trails and that style of light writing, it's just finding different angles to shoot at and finding different environments to shoot at. I'm from San Francisco. Twin Peaks has been a very popular area to go to, mostly for sunset, but here I got on top of one of the peaks. And what's really great about that is it's a one-way around the whole peak area, so cars coming in on the left, and exiting on the right. And this is about a 15-minute exposure. I had to use with filters to create this sort of all-in-one shot of some light writing around the Twin Peaks.
And this is the Pixel Stick and Joshua Tree, and this is, we went out with a group of friends. And we just tried different designs, but again, I really like the wave and using different colors to create a different texture onto that canvas. And then finally, when I was talking about with the Pixel Stick and Magilight, you can actually draw designs into them. And then as you walk them, it's like you're unfurling the design at night. So we helped celebrate Biscayne's 50th anniversary last year, and so I draw "Happy Birthday" and put the logos of national parks. And Bay Photo helped support that, and that's all of our students that you can kinda see. And it looks like we're holding up a banner, but actually, it's not. It's a banner of light that I walked in front of them with that Pixel Stick, and you have to kinda keep the same pace. But again, it forever etched that into the scene. And that's something, again, I had to use the timing, figure out the timing, making sure that I was covering the whole area. But super fun and really can be creative with either just words or designs, logos, that kind of stuff that you can put anywhere into the scene.
This is using the light sword by Light Painting Brushes. And again, I like creating depth, so again, having that light start and then dip down and kinda come all around and surround Paige, who's also again being popped by a Profoto flash there from behind. It really just creates that really interesting and creative portrait. And then there's the flashlight. Sort of those hero shots of that flashlight beam that kind of goes on and on. And yes, this is another form of light writing. To me, it's a little overdone right now, so trying to be more creative than those hero shots. But if you're gonna do it, put yourself in an environment where you're actually showing and exaggerating the space and the time and the size and all that kind of stuff like that. And this is really, I think, a really perfect example of one of my favorites of the hero flashlight shot. I'm standing in between the Twins at Capitol Reef and just shining that beam all the way through. And this is a case where oftentimes we wanna go to our brightest setting on our flashlight. Not the dim ones. Dim one's good for lighting, but if you're gonna wanna do the hero shot, turn it on to your higher setting.
Zooming, so if there are light sources like buildings, again, and words, signs, that kind of stuff like that, we can use a zoom lens and zoom while we're exposing. Again, generally want to keep our exposure short in that sort of eight to 10 second sort of exposure, and then start either wide and move yourself, move in, or start tight, experiment. Start tight and, as soon as you trip the exposure, move the lens. If you hold it in one position more, then it'll etch it more into that scene, and it'll be, you know. Right here, I probably held it at this focal length for probably half the time and then slowly zoomed it to create these sort of light writings and movement. I love what it really did with the clock. And it was sort of a misty night, too, so it was just, also that light was bouncing around a bunch, too. And this is more with the wand, and we had one of our friends here, who is super creative kid, and he was way more talented with light writing than Bobby and I. And we did a night portrait with Bobby, and (murmurs) and Gabriel actually draw some really cool designs. Not me Gabriel, the other Gabriel. Draw some really cool designs behind him. And then using again a flash, Profoto flash, to pop it and forever freeze Bobby in the scene. And then we had some fun with it and turned him into The Thing.
All right, so I hope these images and this video are gonna help inspire you to seize the night and be more creative with light writing from now on.
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