Painting with Light: Techniques and Tips for Beginners taught by John Nader.

A workshop review by Michael Crawley

Have you ever wanted to highlight your car or a house or a still life and make it look spectacular at night?  

 Then this is the workshop for you.  John’s approach  to teaching is very organized and easy to follow.   

We started out in the classroom talking about the terminology and seeing many wonderful examples of John’s light painting of subjects he photographed.  He had many great example images printed on metal, in a wonderful before and after album, and in the digital form.  We were quickly able to see how much light painting really can change and make an image pop.   

John then went over the gear that we would be using later that evening, when we put what we were learning about light painting into use.    He brought and showed us several types of lights and tools that he uses and what each light could be used for.   We also learned how to correctly use each light, white balance them and how to get the best out of each tool and light.

Since we were not going to have photos of our own to work on, John had files for us to use and learn how to build a composite in Photoshop.   We worked along with John as he demonstrated the process of how to pick the files and portions of the image to use.  The hands-on step by step process was so easy to follow and our final image came together so easily.   With the notes and instructions, he provided, a complex process seemed easy to complete.  

After a short dinner break, we headed out to the local park for the hands-on portion of the workshop where John had a local police vehicle for us to light paint.  We all got our cameras set up and ready to go, and the light painting fun began.   Pass after pass, and angle after angle, John began to make strokes of light on our subject.

We were able to see the parts come together on our cameras via the iPad John had making it easy to see what parts we were painting in each shot.  

What a fun and informative workshop!  I highly recommend that you take this intro course into light painting to add this to your bag of photographic knowledge.  

Behind the Scenes: