Process: About Hand-Painted Light

Light represents life. I’m often shaken from the experience of manipulating it.

In common photographic terms, hand-painted light is a technique where the shutter is kept open long enough for the photographer to use moving light sources to apply the light as desired to the subject. The technique is applicable to both film and digital photography.

I also consider the manipulation of light in the darkroom (wet or digital) to be a version of hand-painted light. In wet darkrooms, the light is manipulated by hand using masks during exposure of the print. I emulate the same technique and others in the digital darkroom.

Thomas Robert Frederick