Balanced Rock Lightpainting

Here's a shot of Balanced Rock in Arches N.P. taken last Feb. where I seriously tried my hand at light painting for the first time. I used a $20 battery-operated spot light and set the camera for a 30 second exposure in manual mode with an aperture of f4. The white balance was set to incandescent. Notice the constellation Orion just above the rock. I swept the base of the rock to give a sense of "base".

With digital, it's so very nice to be able to check your shot immediately for these unusual lighting situations. It turned out that with a shutter speed of 30 seconds and sweeping the light constantly during that whole period, the exposure seemed just right.

One variation I'll try for the future is to leave the shutter open for 1 to 2 hours in order to pick up the "star trails". I think that would look very cool.

Try it some time!