Meet photographer, Jake Hicks and receive a training series overview.

Before learning to paint with light, identify a general overview of the equipment and overall rationale of Jake’s lighting setup. Work to create incredibly strong portrait lighting and posing in order to make beautiful, compelling, and engaging long exposure images. Build the foundation of a stro...

Observe the importance of building up the set 1 light at a time to achieve precise results in a long exposure, light painting for an in-studio shoot. Learn Jake’s specific approach to settings, gear and lighting approach to create the highest quality exposure and image capture. Practice with some...

Continue the lighting build up, adding a fill light with more insight into the gear, rationale, and testing to shape the proper lighting balance between the fill and key light. Prepare your images with a shoot-to-edit approach, creating the widest latitude possible for creative control in post-pr...

Work to adjust the backlight to create a perfect balance between the key and fill lights. Test a few exposures, continuing to dial in the balance for optimum balance of skin exposure, shadow latitude, focus, contrast, and dimension.

Position the hair light with precision to avoid unwanted shadows and create the final harmonious balance across all 4 lights. Lean how to avoid creating visual conflicts by properly positioning and angling the lighting setup. Work through iteration, refining a perfect lighting balance, with layer...

Work through a variety of poses to test the strength of the lighting setup and flexibility before beginning the long exposure light painting process.

With the lighting setup, posing, and tools identified and tested, begin the iterative and experimental process of long exposure light painting.

Implement the tools and philosophy as you learn how to paint with light in a studio environment. Assess the ambient light level in the room. Iterate through multiple tests to find the sweet spot of creating compelling imagery with this technique. Develop a sense of how to move light in relationsh...

With testing complete, apply gels to the lighting setup to create a balanced color temperature between the set lights and light painting tools. Put all of the knowledge to work and create multiple long exposures, learn the basics of painting with light in studio using a variety of techniques to c...

Advance your light painting skills with an entirely new setup. Refine your set with a new model, wardrobe, colors, gels and light brushes. Prepare modified tools to create a variety of new shapes and textures of light and entirely new creative.

Create long exposures with dimension and a variety of shapes using the new gel setup and tools. With the effort of careful, layering to the light setup, along with methodical testing in the early stages of the process, achieve powerful results in your imagery, while minimizing problematic variables.

With a rock solid lighting base, alternate with different light brushes and gels to create even more variant imagery. Learn to adjust speed and movement of your lighting tools as you paint with a different source shape

Work with a change in wardrobe, gels, and a combination of light painting tools. Refine the long exposure light painting technique.

Use Lightroom to select an image and prepare it with a procedural and methodical approach for the final editing within Photoshop

Begin retouching the first of four images in Photoshop. Take a broad approach to cleaning up various elements of an image, focusing on major problem areas first. Utilize the patch and cloning tools to create a clean foundation for the retouching workflow - with a primary focus on skin.

Apply dodging and burning in a targeted way to affect specific areas of skin. Create more continuity, definition, depth and tone in specific areas of the subject’s face.

With the initial, targeted areas resolved in cleanup and the initial dodge and burn pass, complete the process of retouching skin. Develop a methodical approach to create smooth texture along with even and natural flow to the skin’s surface

Build a multi-purpose mask to create a more distinctive background with richer color and gradation. Save that same mask for other retouching techniques further on in the workflow

With the same multi-purpose mask, dodge and burn the image with a global approach to create more dimension and definition for the entire image.

Continue to enhance your image by applying a procedural, multi-pass sharpening effect, without affecting the overall color. With a subtle build up of layers, blend modes, and opacity adjustments begin to realize the final stages of your image.

Apply the final layers of polish to your image with an intelligent approach, using isolated color channel curves to bring out the most vibrant and balanced final grade.

With a new model, background, and wardrobe, learn another approach to long exposure photography. Observe how to place movement on the background of your set. With this emphasis, walk through the lighting setup to properly expose this technique.

Begin dialing in your settings to properly expose the backlight onto the white backdrop. Test through captures, isolating the variables to achieve the best results.

With the backlight set, iterate through multiple test exposures to hone in the settings for the key and fill lights. Analyze the relationship between the model and the background, breaking down each exposure. Learn to identify the variables affecting each capture. Understand the relationship betw...

After creating a solid lighting foundation, work through a series of captures by adding camera movement. With the addition of camera movement, learn to create new long exposure effects in relationship to the new background.

Learn to integrate camera movement with moving poses while also adding additional movement on the subject with a fan. Examine your captures to discern how to maintain focus while achieving the long exposure affect of variable movement within your setup. Experiment with your shutter speed to creat...

Create a completely different look with a change in wardrobe, adding a gel, but virtually no change to your lighting setup. Maximize your shoot time by making simple tweaks to achieve a vastly different look.

Select and prepare the best image to retouch in Photoshop using some of the key features of Lightroom.

Begin retouching the second of four images in Photoshop. Apply a first past process with skin cleanup. Use patching and liquify to create a solid base for skin and volume to the subject, before moving into a multi-layered approach

In a second pass, approach skin cleanup with a targeted perspective, isolating specific areas to dodge and burn. Develop a more dimensional, even look, focusing on specific areas to protect and repair.

With the major areas of cleanup resolved, learn to apply a procedural and methodical approach to skin smoothing. Create even texture with tone.

Quickly create another multipurpose mask with the immediate intent of isolating the subject from the background.

In this retouching pass, create a more globalized dimension with shadows and highlights, pushing your image towards the final phase of retouching. Utilize your multipurpose mask to quickly and intelligently apply changes to isolated areas of the image.

Apply sharpening with confidence, without affecting the color balance and tone of your image.

Clean up a variety of spots, bumps, discolorations, and reduce unwanted highlights.

With a third model, new wardrobe, and new lighting setup, create an entirely new variant of the long exposure technique with the lighting emphasis moving back to the subject. Walk through best practices, with lighting, with the goal of a achieving a vibrant, light trails effect.

Work through test captures to refine the edge lighting setup and experiment with different shutter speeds to achieve ideal results. Continue to walk through the lighting rationale, building towards perfect results.

With the edge lights locked in, iterate through multiple captures to refine the key and fill lighting. Reinforce the importance of keeping the ambient and flash lighting separate to achieve the long exposure effect while maintaining tack sharp focus on the subject. Adapt with Jake, as he makes a ...

After a quick wardrobe change, work through multiple captures to create the light trails effect. Analyze how camera movement works with the specularity of the wardrobe, to create fiery trails of light. Study how camera movement and shutter speed directly relate to the light trail effect and how t...

With proper wardrobe selected, lighting and camera settings honed, and camera movement on the subject refined, focus on the proper posing to shape light trails around your subject. Compare Rear vs Front Curtain Sync Flash methods with best practices for this studio shoot.

With a final wardrobe change and new color gels, put all of the techniques together to create a final set of unique, long exposure images. Employ camera, subject, and fan movement to shape dimensional light trails around your subject. Test and vary your movements and implement of your gained know...

Select a third image to retouch in Photoshop, leveraging the tools of Lightroom to create a balanced and properly formatted image for optimum editing

Begin retouching the third image, with a first pass focusing on eliminating spots, bumps, discoloration, and reducing unwanted highlights with the subject. Apply some basic cleanup to the background.

Apply a second pass of skin retouching, using dodge and burn to isolate targeted problem areas

Efficiently apply the same procedural method of skin smoothing to the third image for an even, smooth tone.

Use the same tool sets to create multiple distinct masks for more separation and control over the background and light trails.

As in previous lessons, utilize the variety of masks to isolate subject from background, and efficiently dodge and burn with intention. Create a global sense of dimension with highlights and shadows as you move towards the final stages of retouching this long exposure image.

Apply the same methodology of sharpening to the third long exposure image, with the same mindfulness of not affecting the entire image’s color balance.

Complete the image with a final pass of color toning, utilizing separate channels to isolate specific colors in the highlights, midtones, and shadows. Tweak the highlights of the light trails, leveraging the masking work, for the final finishing polish.

Go on location with Jake Hicks, and observe as he puts into practice all of the fundamentals of long exposure outside the confines of a studio environment. Watch 4 different setups and listen as Jake retrospectively breaks down the challenges and success of working on location to capture long exp...

Select and prepare the best image to retouch in Photoshop using some of the key features of Lightroom.

Clean up a variety of spots, bumps, discolorations, and reduce unwanted highlights

With minimal skin to retouch, work efficiently to maximize the dodging and burning on this fourth outdoor composition, targeting a few areas to maximize skin quality and tone

Utilize the same procedural method to maximize skin tonality, texture and quality. Apply this skin smoothing process to minor fabric inconsistencies.

Create subject separation, definition and dimension across skin and fabric to push the image towards the final layers of retouching

Apply a two multi-pass sharpening process to enhance the contrast of the entire image without compromising color.

For the last image, isolate the color channels of the image to balance and finalize the color grade. Bring all of the layered elements together into the final, polished image for the on location, long exposure image.

Hear some final closing thoughts from Jake Hicks encompassing the journey of Long Exposure Portrait photography and considerations for your work going forward.