For this night prowler project, I wanted to focus on the literal concept of "painting with light." To capture the various colored curved lighting patterns, in addition to the white light, I had a family member put three different color plastics (red, yellow, blue) on top of my iPhone flashlight and paint huge arches over the driveway. These were 30 second exposures each, using an ISO of 100 and aperture of 8. I then had them take a 4 second exposure of me holding a paintbrush, pretending to paint light into the night sky. They used my iPhone flashlight to paint light over me during the exposure. Finally, I took a picture of the bright green moss, during the day, and blended it into the driveway to create a softness and lightness to the scene. Overall, this was a really fun project, and it was fun to experiment with long exposures!
Night Prowler by Suzamme Voigt takes place outside at night because of the green grass on the ground and the dark black and white trees in the background. There is a person in the center bottom of the frame wearing a striped shirt and a long tan apron, holding up one hand holding something in the air; the figure is looking up at the hand. There are these long streaks of light (also known as light trails) in a crescent shape where both ends of the light trails are about to touch the ground. Because of this, there is a radiant light cast onto the grass; they start on the middle ground and go further into the background. The colors of the light trails are red, yellow, light blue, and white; there is one light trail that starts at the subject's hand and goes up into the sky to the upper left corner of the frame creating an "S" like shape.
ReplyDeleteI think the work is about an artist's literary painting with light. I think this way because the subject is wearing an apron that looks like there is some sort of medium or paint on it. Although I can't see the paintbrush in the subject's hand, I do believe she is holding one because of the red "s," like a curve that stands out from all of the crescent-shaped light trails and connects to her hand. Also, when an artist is making work, most of the time, they are looking at what they are doing, which refers to the subject looking up toward her hand or paint brush that is held up in the sky. The crescent-shaped light tails have a variety of lines in colors and shapes; for example, some of the lines are curves, and some have more bumps and squiggles in the shape of the line. Also, the crescent shape of the light trails could symbolize the moon and be taken at night.
For the concept of the image, the appearance and the meaning of the image are straightforward. As for the technique, I think it was experimented with lovely, I do think that the moss could have had a little more value to create more depth. Only because the moss is so well lit, it wouldn't look that bright in exposure or the colors. but the radiant light from the light trials looks perfect. I think the work addresses the project's parameters well, but I do think that blending the moss picture and the original picture of the grass could be interesting. Lastly, the image does use all of the photos taken for this in a transformative way.
This work, I feel like, would exist in our larger culture as a fun experiment and to be shared online with others to see it. The relevance of it would be to show that there is this concept of actually painting with light in photography. It would be shared with an audience for entertainment. The work shows that the longer the exposure there is, the more light will be cast on the subject and be more prominent. For example, in the light trails, there are multiple, but there is more movement in the light trail images because of the 30-second exposure.
Suzanne's work captures the literal meaning of "painting with light" because the subject is holding a paintbrush and a light trail connected to it. She shows us how long exposure, for example, 30 seconds at night with lights, can be transformative with digital compositing and the different blend modes in Photoshop.