152/365 A little light painting

These geraniums have been drawing my eye for weeks, but I've resisted photographing them until last night.

So often, photographers, myself included, put the camera away when it gets dark. But for this photo, I waited until after dusk, instead of catching them in the setting sunlight as I usually do. Then, I took a flashlight out with me and "painted" them.

Light painting is a technique where you use a flashlight -- or a wireless strobe -- to selectively light objects in an otherwise dark room/environment. While the shutter is open, exposing the image, you shine a flashlight over the objects you want to light, in the shape you want, and those are what show up in the final photo. It's as though your scene is a paint-by-number, and you're only choosing to fill in some of the spaces as you "paint" them with your flashlight. Some other examples of how this can work are in this post at Strobist and this Flickr pool.

It can be a really cool technique that I often forget about -- but I'm going to try to change that. It makes me think outside the natural-light box.

Camera: Canon 40D on a tripod, 1s, f/4.5 at ISO 100 outdoors after sunset at about 9:30 p.m., "painted" with a flashlight.