I have never tagged anything with a can of spray paint but I have secretly wanted to.  Halo led light-writing is the kind of thing I could really get in to. The caps can be changed for different colors and the brightness is controlled by the touch of your finger.  If the light runs out you give it a shake just as you would if your can was running out.  A great piece from french designer Aissa Logero.

+via: core77

I think I am on a light kick right now. Loved me some light graffiti. I had way too much fun trying that out. So the question came up: what else could I do to play with light in new ways?

Thanks to Lifehacker, I got my new way to play with lights: Camera Toss. If you haven’t heard of it (like me 12 hours ago) you are thinking, what the hell is that and how dangerous will that be to your camera? Why the hell would anyone want to toss an expensive DSLR in the air? Um, with crazy, fun photos, who wouldn’t….

So it all started with plenty of mumbling and cursing under my breathe, something along the lines of “Are you crazy?” What if you drop the camera?!?!?” “ARGH.” That was quickly following by taking a deep breath, closing my eyes and tossing the camera in the air. Not the best idea in the world to have closed eyes. Drumroll please……..Crazy swirls of lights!!! Success! And so it began…..

Check out some of the pics!

Thanks to the inspiration from my friend, Steven, I decided to test out light graffiti. And wouldn’t you know it, I totally love it. It is the most fun photographing…and not at all easy.

After clearing out a little bit of space, setting the camera on the tripod and turning off the lights, the fun began. It was quite an experience. I cannot tell you how many times I crashed into things since it was dark. The logical thing to do would have been to move all objects that could potentially cause injury but that makes way too much sense. That still made too much sense even after crashing a couple times. But did I move anything? Nope. Art is pain?

I’m definitely not good at light graffiti yet but this is definitely going to be a new project of mine. Check out my first attempts.

It’s amazing what a camera can capture that the naked eye cant. Jan Wöllert and Jörg Miedza, the brains behind Light Art Performance Photography, created these photographs by using long-exposure photographs with a slow shutter speed, and definitely a tripod. A slow shutter speed allows the lens to stay open longer so that it captures a greater amount of light. You might not be able to get photos with this type of resolution with just any SLR because they used a 21.1 megapixel camera (Canon EOS 5D Mark II) but you still can capture light images by manipulating the shutter speed and using a tripod. Check out more of their photos HERE

I am rushing out the door right now,but I must stop for a moment and report on this very cool discovery related to Man Ray and light painting, or as he called it “space writing”.  I was forwarded this information by the Man Ray Trust.

Man Ray is the first light painter.  His “space writing” images are the very first recorded light painting images that I can find.  You can see his 3 “space writing” images here.

Well, in a recent article in The Smithsonian Magazine there is news about an interesting new discovery in his “space writing” images.  Quoting from the article, “…Ellen Carey, a photographer whose working method is similar to Man Ray’s, has discovered something that has been hidden in plain sight in Space Writings for the past 74 years: the artist’s signature, signed with the penlight amid the swirls and loops.”

This is a link to the article. Be sure to check out the interactive demonstration at the right hand side of the page to see his signature outlined clearly.

I’ll have more about “space writing” later as I work to include these images, and analysis of them, into Luminary.

Somewhere between where we’ve been and where we’re going we have a choice. We have a choice to become stronger; stronger than our pasts, stronger than what people think, stronger than what we think. How true it is, that when we are weak, we are strong. We have a choice today, we can be stronger than we were the day before. But our strength will never be enough. It is only in a mighty Creators hands that we can find strength, true strength; and then, and only then, can we truly become… stronger.

the french designer most known for the light graffiti instrument : halo light, has several ‘handy’ designs that i am especially fond of . . . <best part: toothpicks are removable/changeable>

chopsticks AND toothpicks

also

spoon/chopstick +

wait for it

soy sauce dish!

though truth be told i like to use chopsticks as a compliment to my spoon when enjoying tasty noodle soups.  still – better than the spork.  aïssa logerot also designed this clever coffee table, which sows the weight of any objects resting on it

instable

plus – the individual wooden pieces can be removed + rotated to display a grey face – creating words, designs or chess boards.   love me some multifunctionality!

unstable

Here it is:  The next step of our light graffiti.

Everything frame of this video was shot with Nikon D700 (A still camera, not a video camera) and edited in Apple Aperture and imovie.  I think we’re just in the beginning stages of learning this technique, so hopefully we’ll have a lot more for you in the future.

Cheers,
-neil

Just saw these on the Telegraph website, some of the images are amazing!
Created by Jan Wöllert and Jörg Miedza, plenty more examples on their website Light Art Performance Photography

Painting with light, aka light graffiti, is a fun way to stay creative.  My friends and I have been playing around with it over the past week or two and I thought I’d share.

We’re still getting the hang of it, but I’m happy with some of the pictures that we’ve done so far.  It’s a lot harder than it might look, as most of the time you have no point of reference to help make the lines meet up.

This is the first one we did and it's still my favorite. Chris Jones made the drawing and I pushed the button.

You can easily try this on your own.  All you need is a DSLR, a tripod and a flashlight.

Find someplace dark and set the camera on the tripod.  You want to adjust your exposure to as long of a time as you can.  30 seconds is a good start, but you’ll probably find that you need longer.  Then take a flashlight, point it towards the camera and start drawing.

This is the first complicated one that I did (mostly) on my own. Thanks to Chris Jones for drawing the farmer.

This is the first complicated on that we tried. This is before we starting using colored gels on the flashlights. Also note the fire on the tower from a piece of burning paper. Contributing artists: myself, Chris Jones, John Houghton, Gavin Hall, and Ed Mayhew.

No fancy photoshop tricks are needed, but it helps if you know your way around photoshop a little.  Most of ours’ are multiple photos laid on top of each other because we’ve had trouble finding dark enough areas in Taipei to shoot longer than 30 second exposures.  Doing it that way also helps with another technique that we’ve been working on that I’ll share with you in the very near future.

We're trying to find locations where we can work the characters into the surrounding scene. Contributing artists: Chris Jones, and Ed Mayhew.

Hey, I used to teach kindergarten, ok?

I love this picture because it reminds me of sitting in 6th grade math class and drawing in my notebook. What do you expect when you get 5 men with flashlights (and beers)? Artists: Tom Bowen, Chris Jones, Ed Mayhew, and myself.

One aspect I like about light painting is trying to work with the scene around you. Artist: Chris Jones

The artists that contributed to this project are: myself, Chris Jones, Tom Bowen, Ed Mayhew, Gavin Hall, Dave Loyd, and John Houghton.

Cheers,
-neil

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by: adorvi

See this article at LuminaryMovie.com

LAPP-PRO makes the rest of us feel something. We felt something when we visited them and it seems like more and more people are starting to feel the power of their images. It’s not hard to understand why folks are attracted to LAPP-PRO’s images. It’s exciting to see that they have gotten some TV play in their home town Bremen. Check out the movie here.

LAPP-PRO creates some of the most compelling and, dare I say, astonishing pictures I have seen. They are full of Psychic Energy and Gestalt. Gestalt is often defined in English as: A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.

LAPP-PRO see’s the Light

“Gestalt psychology is based on the observation that we often experience things that are not a part of our simple sensations…Furthermore, say the Gestalt psychologists, we are built to experience the structured whole as well as the individual sensations.” (Dr. C. George Boree).

Now, I think these are apt descriptions for light painting in general, but especially for the images LAPP-pro create. Their pictures are much more than the sum of their parts. The gestalt of LAPP-PRO is seen in each gesture, in every “brush stroke” they make. The unique nature of LAPP-PRO is that it is a whole body, kinesthetic, action/experience that is simultaneously technical, creative and developmental. The following is a quote from Dr. Gerald Grow:

“The core elements of the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence are control of one’s bodily motions and capacity to handle objects skillfully (206). Gardner elaborates to say that this intelligence also includes a sense of timing, a clear sense of the goal of a physical action, along with the ability to train responses so they become like reflexes. Along with these, you often find a high degree of fine-motor control and a gift for using whole body motions….Gardner cites a dancer’s conviction that we all have the capacity “to apprehend directly” the actions, feelings, or dynamic abilities of other people, without help from words or pictures (228)” (Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. 1983. New York: Basic Books, 1985)

So, I feel like all of these statements are pertinent to the analysis of LAPP’s creations. We can “apprehend directly” the actions and dynamic abilities of Jan and Jorge by deconstructing their motions. Light painting allows us to deconstruct the artists’ motions and the complexity (or simplicity) of their movements as they relate to the “whole.” Kinesthetic Intelligence and the “clear sense of the goal of a physical action” are definitely things we experienced in our time with LAPP-PRO. The “goal” of their actions is both technical and conceptual and it is the unique interaction between these elements that makes LAPP-PRO so extremely and aggressively impactful. They have a “clear sense” of the image they want to represent as well as the “high degree of fine-motor control and a gift for using whole body motions” to make it happen. The magic comes from the intuition and psychic sensitivity to the subconscious, emotional, and psychological representations on their pictures. A simple technical execution of light painting does not ensure an emotional response in the viewer in the same way that pure concept and gesture do not ensure a quallty image. However, the thoughtful juxtaposition and interaction of these skills really does manifest a Gestalt that evokes both thoughts and feeling of a “higher order”. As a viewer we experience and then interact with their art on the same level at which it was created.

There is most definitely a “curve” to being able to analyze and fully experience LAPP-PRO’s art. The beauty is that, classically, the journey literally IS the destination. Light painting marks the artists’ literal physical passage and “kinesthetic intelligence.” Like anything else it takes practice; practice to make and practice to completely appreciate. Why does it take practice to appreciate it? Well, one of the first questions people often ask when they see light painting is “how did they do that?” and sometimes the answer is simple. But with LAPP’s creations it is a complex process that is hard to decipher and challenging to deconstruct. It requires some serious thought and analysis to begin to imagine exactly how these pictures could have possibly been made. We, as viewers, imagine ways in which they must have moved, lights that could have been used etc….We create pictures, movies, in our minds as we imagine and “re-trace” their movements in 4 dimensions. We “re-live” the journey they took through the frame, through time, to make the picture and we begin to “apprehend” their feelings and/or “dynamic abilities.” Remember, the journey is the destination. When watching light painting being made in real-time we only see the light in the literal and proverbial “Now”. We experience the process as a series of motions illuminated in increments and gone when the shutter clicks with no “real” image left. The picture captures the motions, the journey, and when we see the image our understanding of the meaning of the artists’ actions becomes clearer while simultaneously evoking something completely different than what we feel while watching the process.

Another important element to the Gestalt is the interaction with environment, but I’ll save that for another article.

LAPP-PRO has steaming balls.

Graffiti Light 01.0

Graffiti Light 01.1

Graffiti Light 01.2

by adorvi

Light Graffiti-Освети ночь.

 «Light Graffiti»(ЛГ), оно же световое граффити или freeze light – новейший вид фотографического творчества, по сути это рисование светом. Редкий случай, когда искусство имеет две стороны: творческую и техническую. Фотоаппарат, фантазия, терпение и светящиеся предметы – все, что необходимо для создания светового рисунка.

Сам процесс достаточно прост. Фотоаппарат крепится на штативе, устанавливается большая выдержка — от 15 секунд и больше. Ассистент чертит в воздухе фигуры фонариками или другими светящимися предметами — и уходит из кадра. На самом деле, для создания фотографии в стиле «Light Graffiti» достаточно и одного человека, но наиболее содержательным рисунок получается, когда светохудожники работают группой. Из-за большой выдержки движущихся людей практически не видно, только статичные элементы и яркие линии от светящихся предметов – в этом и заключается смысл «ЛГ». Нарисовать что-то стоящее в такое короткое время – не так-то легко. Нужно уметь хорошо ориентироваться в пространстве и четко представлять себе рисунок, чтобы безошибочно соединять его линии.

«ЛГ» как вид фотографического искусства зародился в Германии и привлекает все больше и больше людей по всему миру. Дмитрий Бурмистров, русский мастер «Light Graffiti», в кругу световых художников известный как «DDD», согласился ответить на вопросы «Журналиста».

Дмитрий, как ты оцениваешь свою работу в «Light Graffiti»?

Я увлекаюсь «ЛГ» сравнительно недавно, но, могу сказать, что уже достиг определенных успехов, потому как на мои работы ориентируются многие знакомые, решившие заняться «ЛГ». Хотя, конечно, в этом деле главное – собственный опыт, и чужие работы могут лишь подсказать новые креативные решения.

«ЛГ» ведь можно сделать и в программе Photoshop, нет?

Конечно, можно. Но это слишком просто, ощущения совершенно не те. Когда на фотографии у тебя получается яркий световой рисунок из ничего — первое время переполняет восторг. Это то же самое, что сравнивать живопись и рисунки в программе Paint.

Ты делаешь световое граффити один или в компании? Сколько это занимает времени?

Чаще всего я рисую сам, но и не отказываюсь от помощи знакомых, особенно, когда дело касается чего-нибудь сложного. Конечно, от этого зависит и время – чем сложнее рисунок, тем больше на него тратится времени и попыток. Помню, на один рисунок у меня ушло около 2-ух часов.

Какие советы ты дашь новичкам и тем, кто когда-нибудь решит заняться «Light Graffiti»?

В «ЛГ» не маловажен хороший фотоаппарат, я, например, пользуюсь Canon 40D с китовским объективом, мне хватает. Что касается самого рисунка…Нужно чаще тренироваться, чтобы получалось правильно соединять линии. В зависимости от того, что хочешь нарисовать, выбираешь светящиеся предметы: фонарики, бенгальские огни, зажигалки, свечки…

Нельзя не отметить, что существенным плюсом «Light Graffiti» является уменьшение вандализма. Световые произведения невесомы, а это значит, что гаражи, заборы и подъезды останутся невредимы.