For me, one of the most exciting things about making a photograph is the ability to reveal a tremendous amount of texture in Light Painting.

"Vintage Oyster Knife" © Harold Ross 

As you may know, I'm delighted by the fact that people used to repair things. In fact, it brings me a lot of joy restoring something rather than replacing it. When I came across this vintage oyster knife that belonged to my friend Zach, I couldn't resist making a photograph of it! What really caught my eye was the wire repair to the handle that the owner made.

By using light from an appropriate distance and angle, and with appropriate motion, we can control to a very high level the amount of texture that we see. Of course, light painting is a superb method to reveal shape and form as well.

For capturing texture in still life work, we first need to be aware of what area of texture we are trying to reveal, and then we need to make sure to skim the light at the appropriate angle to reveal that texture. I almost always dedicate an entire capture to one area of texture. That texture can later be masked into the image in the editing phase.

Here, we can clearly see the crack in the handle of the oyster knife. As mentioned above, I did, in this case, make a separate capture, making sure to skim the light at a shallow angle across that crack, and then I simply masked it in to taste. The amount of control that we have is tremendous.

Of course, detail in light painting isn't restricted to just texture… light painting is also a superb method to reveal shape and form as well.

You can see the wonderful amount of volume and dimensionality that I was able to achieve in the handle just through my simple masking techniques.

I'd like to say that the technique is actually transformative.

We can transform an ordinary subject into something quite engaging and impactful.

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If you are interested, here's a short video talking about this subject:

Happy Light Painting!... and always remember...especially when enhancing texture through lighting... Skim The Light!

- Harold

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Creating light painted still life images is extremely rewarding, and something which I teach in great detail throughout my comprehensive Light Painting Online Video Course.

See some images that my students have produced here: Student Images, and what they are saying about my Online Course here: Student Testimonials.