Thursday, January 14, 2010

De-ephemeralizing a light show

kw: art, artists, photographs

One nice thing about a book like Ripley's Believe it or Not: Seeing is Believing is that it clues a fellow in to interesting and unusual things. Today I came across their report on sophisticated images made with moving lights, produced by Lichtfaktor, a group of German artists.

They produce images such as this by making a very long exposure while one or several artists, using flashlights, lightbars or other light-emitting equipment, and wearing black or dark clothing, moves through the frame while moving the light sources in some pattern they've pre-designed. It is a kind of performance art captured in a single image.

No matter how they plan, the element of improvisation is huge. When you have both foreground and background lighting going on, as this image has, you also have to be careful that the people in front don't make a "blip" by running in front of the lights behind. Timing and staging make or break such a shot. This is way cooler than a pic of someone writing their name with a sparkler.

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