Reuben Wu’s <i>Aeroglyphs</i> is one of my favorite series of photographs from recent memory. Really stunning work. <a href="https://reubenwu.com/projects/25/aeroglyphs" rel="nofollow">https://reubenwu.com/projects/25/aeroglyphs</a>
I love the fact that tech is so cheap that tinkerers can do some interesting things now. Light painting has been gaining from the simple use of a light source to illuminate something for long exposure photography for a while now. However, the creative means of lighting with the new toys that cheap tech is allowing for has made it even more fun to play. Also, the sensitivity of the new camera sensors make have helped.<p>I'm old school, my favorite light source for light painting is the full moon. Everything looks daylight until you notices the give tell-tales like smoothed out water to indicate long exposure, or night stars in the blue sky[0]. If timed correctly, you can get a moon strike which is where it starts while the moon is below horizon, and then the image starts to change as the moon rises[1]. I wish I had a link of live action video shot with nothing but moonlight.<p>If you have an actual budget, you can bring out enough lights to colorfully light up the side of a mountain[2]. (I have nothing to do with the making of this video)<p>[0] <a href="https://vimeo.com/241441999" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/241441999</a>
[1] <a href="https://vimeo.com/241600503" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/241600503</a>
[2]<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReMPjkJdvMY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReMPjkJdvMY</a>
I prefer the natural bird flight time lapses ("Ornitographies") of @xavibou<p><a href="http://www.xavibou.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.xavibou.com</a><p><a href="https://instagram.com/xavibou" rel="nofollow">https://instagram.com/xavibou</a>
When done with video it looks like a real-world raytracing demo: <a href="https://www.stratusleds.com/aerial-leds" rel="nofollow">https://www.stratusleds.com/aerial-leds</a>
Painting with light has long been used to make shadowless photographs of industrial and military components.[1] It's used there for clarity, not artistic effect.<p>[1] <a href="https://maritime.org/doc/threeinch/img/plate001.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://maritime.org/doc/threeinch/img/plate001.jpg</a>
artificial light in nature is the basis for one of the coolest ski films i've ever seen: <a href="https://youtu.be/4DjdJydl-ds?t=92" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/4DjdJydl-ds?t=92</a>
See also the Ball of Light series by South Australian based photographer Denis Smith: <a href="https://www.denissmith.com.au/ball-of-light" rel="nofollow">https://www.denissmith.com.au/ball-of-light</a>
This is a totally different style, but I have recently become a huge fan of James Turrell. There the light is "real" (i.e., it's not captured through photography), but often using naturally produced sunlight along with controlled colored light systems in tandem.<p>He's also building a massive art piece at Roden Crater. It's a big mind boggling no one has used it for a sci-fi movie yet. If you ever get a chance to see one his skyspaces or his artwork, I highly recommend it. It can be very entrancing and meditative.
Off-camera light and creative lighting are two of the most powerful ways to create surrealism in a medium that, in theory, if capturing what is literally happening in the real world. Realizing that photography literally means "writing with light" has inspired my dabbling in the hobby of photography more than anything else!
This is super-interesting conceptually, and fascinating to look at.<p>But I can't help but feel you could get exactly the same output by compositing daylight photos and gently photoshopping them in, as by compositing these drone-illuminated shots and layering them in.<p>When you're trying to achieve this type of artificiality anyways, this seems like an awfully expensive and complicated way to do it...
The photo of Crowley Lake made me curious. The columns that look carved out of the stone at the shore are not man-made at all: <a href="http://www.geologyin.com/2017/01/mystery-of-crowley-lake-columns-solved.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.geologyin.com/2017/01/mystery-of-crowley-lake-col...</a>
You know what would really blow me away? If someone came up with a way to convert a 3D polygon mesh into a drone's flight path so that it could render any sort of 3D object into a scene with timelapse lighting. Light <i>rendering</i>.
It's nice to see north Wales crop up on HN. Moel Tryfan and its quarry is one of many in the locality. I'd usually call it unremarkable, but this photo has taken it to somewhere else.
As beautiful as the images are, I can't help but wonder if we really want to be running loud, bright drones in the middle of the only quiet, peaceful areas that still exist.
This is nothing new. There are various areas of professional photography that have long used long exposures to selectively add light. Sometimes called "flashlight painting", the photographer can use a literal flashlight to fill in shadow areas selectively during a long exposure.
This can produce images that are not physically possible using static light sources. The use of a drone over landscapes is a simple extension of this longstanding studio technique.<p><a href="https://www.photigy.com/school/how-to-use-light-painting-in-product-photography/" rel="nofollow">https://www.photigy.com/school/how-to-use-light-painting-in-...</a>