I decided to call my blog “Light Paintings”. For me, these two simple words perfectly describe the art of photography. A photograph is nothing more than a blank canvas painted on with light – the photographer’s tool equivalent of a paint brush or crayons.

In fact there is an entire technique in photography dedicated to light painting using a variety of artificial light sources such as a flashlights, LED lights etc. The technique is simple – position yourself in a dark room, set up your tripod mounted camera for long shutter speeds (e.g. by setting your camera to Bulb Mode), trigger the shutter open, use a light source to paint your picture, then close the shutter. Simple as pie, but the results can be astonishing and the creative possibilities are endless.

Last night, was the first night in over a week with no Euro football matches on TV. Being bored to death and seeing that I could not get over the beer addiction I had developed in the previous days, I decided to set up the following shot. It’s by no means a work of art, but given that it took me just under 5 mins to compose, execute and process, I believe it proves my point.

Taken with my tripod mounted Canon 60D and Canon 24-70 F2.8L lens, in Manual mode, ISO 100, F11 with a 20″ exposure. Only adjustment made in Photoshop was to increase the Blacks slider to darken the background.