Egg Macro Photography

Egg Macro Photography – Easter Egg Lightpainting – Watch on YouTube

While the kids are painting their Easter eggs, perhaps you can find some time to paint your own… with light! In this article, we’re combining egg macro photography with light painting to capture a uniquely creative style of shot!

Egg Macro Photography

If you have done a lot of still life or close-up photography, you might be very familiar with this kind of shot. The egg balanced on two forks is a very common shoot to try. When you first get a macro lens, it’s what most people think of when they say “egg macro photography”.

However, we want to take it to the next level and add some coloured streaks of light. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but if you’ve never done long exposures or light painting before, it’s a very fun shoot!

Each shot will come out totally different and it’s endlessly repeatable, so you can have hours of fun taking all kinds of different shots of the same egg! It’s also a great shoot for getting to grips with light and camera settings as you will need to be shooting on manual mode!

Long Eggsposures

Light painting is a technique that requires a long exposure. If you’re not doing egg macro photography at the same time, then you can apply it to all kinds of other shoots.

The first step is controlling your environment. A long exposure will gather a lot of light, even light you can’t see with the naked eye. We’re aiming for a 20-30s exposure, in a well lit room, it that will usually cause your image to be over exposed. Even with the smallest apeture and ISO, 30s will gather any light present in your room.

Set your camera to ISO 50-100, the largest f number your lens can manage, and then test how long you can expose for without seeing an image. Don’t add any additional light yet, we just need a base level of brightness.

Once everything is dark, and you have a long exposure of 15s+ you will be able to begin light painting. This involves adding new light to your image, but moving it around too. The longer you leave your lights in one spot, the brighter that area will become. You can even move your hands through the image, as long as they are not brightly lit, they won’t show up!

We painted in blue and pink to the image above while lighting the egg from the front too. This is a great way to add some simple colour to the image.

Light streaks

Now it’s time to get creative. Passing your light source through the image will drag a streak of light through it’s path. It’s best to use a small, direct light source like an un-defused LED. The Lighting Arms of the Adaptalux Studio are perfect for passing through an image. The long flexible gooseneck allows you to use them like a magic wand to cast effects into the image!

Time is a factor here. The faster you move your light, the dimmer it will appear. If you move slowly, the light will become overexposed. Any light you cast onto your egg will be added up over time to change the exposure in different parts of the image.

Try switching colours around to add multiple different colours to your image. You can also try other effects like the strobe mode of the Pod Mini to create a dotted line as the LED turns on and off during it’s movement.

Trial and Error

It’s very hard to repeat the same movement twise with light painting, so you will end up taking lots of shots. Expect to repeat the same movement over and over until you get the result you’re looking for. Experiment with different ways to light your egg macro photography and you will come out with a much more interesting and unique image than simply using conventional lighting.

We also added some light to the background of some of these images. A dim white light to the front of the egg will keep it the correct colour while we painted in the effects. Remember to expose for light’s that don’t move. Their brightness will build over the full time of the exposure. It might not look bright to you, but it might to your camera over time!

Light painting added a little extra “something” to that very prolific egg macro photography shot, the colour and creative possibilities of some LED lighting will never get old as long as you keep trying new things!

Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more macro photography tutorials, ideas and inspiration!