Things are looking up
In this beautiful self-portrait, we see photographer Greg Rakozy stargazing somewhere where there isn’t light pollution. On Instagram, Greg says the photo was a long exposure (~25 sec.) taken with a fisheye lens.
The photo really makes me want to camp outdoors and sleep under the stars, what a great shot!
The couple travelled with an LED hula hoop so they could experiment with light painting and long exposure photography.
To celebrate her college graduation, photographer Grant Mallory and his girlfriend (now fiancée!) Maria Jacob decided to explore their home country of the United States by embarking on an unforgettable road trip.
They visited many of the nation’s most popular national parks including: Olympic National Park in Washington, Badlands National Park in South Dakota, Bryce Canyon in Utah, Crater Lake in Oregon and Redwoods National Park in California.
The couple decided to bring along an LED hula hoop so they could experiment with light painting and long exposure photography. It’s also a fun way to connect their trip with a common theme as they explore the natural beauty of the US. You can follow all of their travels on their blog, He & She Travel.
For more photography from Grant you can check him out at the links below.
[via PetaPixel]
In ‘Impermanent Sculptures‘, artist Vitor Schietti uses a firework to create long exposure, light paintings that only the camera’s eye sees.
Long Exposure Light Painting with Fireworks by Vitor Schietti
In ‘Impermanent Sculptures‘, artist Vitor Schietti uses a firework to create long exposure, light paintings that only the camera’s eye sees.
The Brazilian-based artist says the time frame to achieve these images is very short, roughly 40 minutes per day, so he’s lucky if he gets 1 or 2 shots. In a press release Vitor delves into the process:
“While some images are acquired in one single exposure, some others are composed by the process of overlaying bits of light paintings from two or more pictures to compose the final image. Apart from this process and some color and contrast adjustments, the result is basically untouched, conceived entirely from real performance with fireworks. By creating these images, which I refer to as Impermanent Sculptures, I draw the viewer’s attention to abstract concepts taking place in real environments.”
Below you will find a selection from the series as well as a detailed explanation for how he created his most popular image, Tree of Life, including a behind the scenes video that shows Vitor using fireworks on a stick to reach the higher areas of the tree.
One of the most successful images, Tree of Life, of a vigorous white tree standing alone before a clean horizon, was achieved overlaying 12 pictures taken consecutively on location, 9 performing light paintings with fireworks in different parts of the three, with the assistance of a long rod which I manipulated from the ground and also from up the canopy, where I climbed while my assistant managed the camera. I also shot 3 pictures firing a flash to illuminate the three as a whole. Nothing was created in Photoshop apart from the process of overlaying images with the lighten blending mode and some contrast and color adjustments.
This particular tree is called ‘Cagaita’, it blossoms only during a couple of weeks per year, replacing all its leaves by white flowers when the dry season is coming to an end and the rains begin to fall again.
Seen here are the beautiful Elakala Waterfalls in Blackwater Falls State park, West Virginia, USA. Elakala Falls are a series of four waterfalls.
The first of the series of waterfalls is 35 feet (11 m) in height and is easily accessible from park trails. The remaining three waterfalls of the series are progressively more difficult to access, and have no official marked trails to them. The gorge is nearly 200 feet deep at this section accounting for the difficulty of the descent to the lower waterfalls of the series.
The name of the waterfalls comes from a Native American legend, although several significantly different versions exist. According to one account it involves a princess named Elakala who threw herself over the edge of the first waterfall when her lover scorned her. Another account of the legend involves a Massawomee warrior named Elakala who was girl-shy and fell to his death from the falls while being pursued by two women of his tribe. [source]
This photo, taken by ForestWander Nature Photography, was awarded second place in the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year for 2009.
Photographer Fefo Bouvier captured this incredible night time photo of bioluminescent plankton illuminating the water as the Milky Way Galaxy shines above. The photo, which was recently highlighted as NASA’s Earth Picture of the Day, was taken in the Atlantic Ocean at Barra de Valizas, Uruguay where some of the darkest skies in the world can be found.
The photo was taken this past June with an exposure time of 15 seconds. Responsible for the blue glow is Noctiluca scintillans, commonly known as Sea Sparkle. They are a free-living non-parasitic marine-dwelling species of dinoflagellate that exhibit bioluminescence when disturbed.
If you’re interested in prints, they are available through Bouvier’s website.
Luis Hernan uses long exposure photography and an instrument called a Kirlian Device to try and visualize the wifi signals all around us. On his project website Digital Ethereal, Hernan explains:
The Kirlian Device is an instrument designed to reveal qualities of wireless networks. The device is named after Semyon Davidovich Kirlian, who discovered and perfected a photographic technique to capture electrical coronal discharges.
Inside, the device is powered by an Arduino UNO board connected to a Arduino WiFi Shield. Both components process and map the RSSI values of a previously specified SSID network into colour using a heatmap colour scheme. The mapped colours are then passed to a Pololu LED strip. The operation is possible by the use of two 5V lithium batteries. [source]
Hernan continues:
“I believe our interaction with this landscape of electromagnetic signals, described by Antony Dunne as Hertzian Space, can be characterised in the same terms as that with ghosts and spectra. They both are paradoxical entities, whose untypical substance allows them to be an invisible presence. In the same way, they undergo a process of gradual substantiation to become temporarily available to perception. Finally, they both haunt us. Ghosts, as Derrida would have it, with the secrets of past generations. Hertzian space, with the frustration of interference and slowness.”
If you’re interested in trying the visualization yourself, Hernan has built a free Android app called the Kirlian Device mobile which is available through the Google play store.
[via Laughing Squid]
The Purakaunui Falls are a cascading three-tiered waterfall (20 meters/66 ft tall) on the Purakaunui River, located in The Catlins in the southern South Island of New Zealand. As one of very few South Island waterfalls away from the alpine region, it has long been a popular destination. The falls are an iconic image for The Catlins region and were featured on a New Zealand postage stamp in 1976. [source]
The falls are located 17 km (11 mi) to the southwest of the small town of Owaka and 5 kilometres (3 mi) from the river’s outflow into the Pacific Ocean. They can be reached via a 10-minute bush walk from a car park on the Waikoato Valley / Purakaunui Falls Road, a gravel side-road off the main Owaka-Invercargill road. [source]
During the Christmas season, public trolleys in Budapest, Hungary are outfitted with over 30,000 twinkling LED lights. The tradition began in 2009 and has been a hit with passengers ever since. The lit up trams have become a beacon for photo ops and creative photographers have found interesting ways to capture them.
In this eight second long exposure photograph by Viktor Varga, the moving tram looks like it’s moving through space and time. Reports of Doc Brown and Mart McFly at the trolley’s helm have yet to be confirmed 🙂
How cool is this! Photographer Luke Staff took a long exposure of his backlit keyboard while slowly zooming in and this was the result. Luke posted the image to reddit back in December of 2013. In the comments Luke explains how he got the shot:
“Setup the camera tripod, set the camera to manual with ISO 400, 4 sec exposure, and 5.6 aperture then started the exposure, with the shutter open I zoomed the lens pausing at the be[ginn]ing and end. It took a ton of tries to get it right. The room was also completely dark except the keyboard backlight. You can bump the exposure time if you want to use a smaller aperture or ISO. Also depending on how bright the backlight is on your keyboard you may have to lower the ISO anyways. I centered on the letter “L” because my name is Luke.” [source]
For more fascinating long exposure photography featured on the Sifter, see here.
Tsuneaki Hiramatsu is an amateur photographer currently living in Okayama, Japan. For the last few years, Tsuneaki has ventured outside of the city centre into the forests of Japan to capture the flight paths of fireflies at night.
To achieve the dreamlike images, Tsuneaki takes a series of 8 second long exposure photographs. He then digitally merges all of the individual photographs into the stacked images you see below. The fireflies light up the forest night and Tsuneaki is there to witness it all and share it with the rest of the world to appreciate.
These are the most recent images in Hiramatsu’s ongoing series. The Sifter first featured the photographer’s amazing work back in May 2012.
To see more, be sure to check out Hiramatsu’s work at the links below.
