When do you do light painting during “stacked” star trails?

How can you create eye-popping light painting while photographing star trails photos with less work and stress? Find out some effective strategies for this and more!

First, what is light painting?

The term is often used loosely to describe any addition of light to a night photograph. Really, though, it’s a technique that uses a handheld light source to illuminate a scene during a long exposure. Your flashlight is your paint brush, and you are quite literally painting the scene with light. Similar to a film director, you control what you illuminate and what you keep in shadow using your handheld light. Night photographers have used this technique for many decades.

Much of beautiful light painting is about using dramatic angles to enhance your subject, not just simply blasting light at it.

Think about it. Your cameraphone flash or pop-up flash is not very flattering, is it? That’s because it’s flat lighting that looks awful. In that same way, lighting from behind the camera is not flattering either. After all, it’s the same angle.

You can learn more about effective light painting angles here.

When do you do light painting during “stacked” star trails?

This is a question I get asked occasionally during the night photography workshops I teach or elsewhere. If you are creating star trails by taking one photo after another in succession using an intervalometer or remote shutter release, then “stacking” them in Photoshop or StarStax, when should you do your light painting?

The simple answer? Any time you want.

Why is that?

Because when you “stack” successive photos for creating star trails, you are using Lighten Mode. This, in a nutshell, simply allows the brightest parts of each image to shine through. If you have a stack of, say, ten photos, and you do your light painting on the third photo, your light painting will shine through because it’s the brightest part of that image!

That said, I do have some effective approaches for light painting during your star trails.

What are some effective approaches for light painting during “stacked” star trails?

1. One and done

If you have your tecnique down and you know what you’re doing, you could make it simple. You could light paint during the very first photo in the sequence. Then, you could simply let your camera click away, one photo after another, while you relax and eat a sandwich. When you load everything into StarStax or Photoshop, your light painting will shine through.

I often will use Layer Masks in Photoshop to block out the foregrounds of the other “stacked” photos if there is a full moon “smearing” the shadows over time or there are other lights moving around. This way, I have a better-defined foreground subject—more like what I intended. You have choices.

The benefit here is that if, for some reason, you don’t like your result, you can just ditch the first photo and still have the star trails. Or you can blend in all the parts you like. And of course, you only need to light paint once.

2. Keep light painting during multiple exposures

You certainly could experiment with your light painting during two or more exposures in your star trails. Maybe ALL of them! Why not? If you want to try different things or make absolutely certain that your light painting is on point, go for it. This will give you choices.

The downside, of course, is that you might need to blend only one of them in during post-processing. Or you might have to blend several of these together using Layer Masks to your liking. You might like part of the light painting in one exposure, but prefer another aspect in another exposure.

The benefit here is that you have choices. It’s a bit more work to blend these together. But it could be well worth it. It also might make you feel better in the field, knowing that you have tons of choices.

3. A light painting sandwich

You probably know what I mean by this. Yes, light painting during both the first and last exposure.

The benefit here is that, if you wish, you can choose the best exposure and ditch the other one without even needing to mask it out using Layer Masks. This gives you choices. And of course, if you are comfortable with Layer Masks and blending, you can certainly blend your favorite parts of these two exposures together!

Some more examples of star trails with light painting!

I usually do my light painting during the first photo. But every once in a while, I’ll choose the third option if I have another idea or want to do another version for “safety”.

All the star trails photos in the gallery below were made using the first method, where I did my light painting during the first frame only. I like a good challenge, and enjoy getting everything in one frame. However, it is certainly quite valid to try several different approaches to see how they can go together. You simply need to blend them together during post-processing, such as in Photoshop.

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