Love Tower was created in my aunts field in Denver, NC with four of my family members and some glow sticks. At first I was just experimenting with them running in the field and seeing how my camera did with the exposures, however it didn't seem to have much of a concept. Eventually my dad starting doing circles back to back in the same motion and I got the most wonderful, crisp shape in one shot. Once I learned about that technique I tried to get the lights to create words, however it was too much movement for my camera, so I recommended them doing hearts. None of the shots had all four of them doing a complete heart, but with the multiple photos I took I was able to combine about 6 different images to create the four hearts. The photos of them running around the field eventually came in handy for the background lights and making the composition more interesting. Out of all of the glow sticks (9) my dad was the only one to have a green one, and he only had one, so instead of making a heart he just kind of ran around the whole time, which is where the green rings and trail to the energy tower come from. Being this was my family the hearts are a symbol of love, and it is being illuminated strongly through light and energy.
The weekend I shot for this project, I was visiting my aunt's house in Denver and since it was my little cousin's birthday, my whole family was staying there. I mentioned the project to them and showed them some reference photos so once it became dark we gathered as many different light sources as we could find and walked out to their field which aligns with the path of transmission towers. Although it was like 10 o'clock PM, the sky was still very light from where we were, so I used that lighting as a way to focus my camera. After taking a few photos of things like candles, a light up ghost necklace, a birthday sign, I realized the neon glow sticks were showing up most vibrantly. I also realized after a few shots that I was more likely to get a good exposure if they did the same motion the whole time my camera was taking the photo (10 seconds). Since my dad managed to get a perfect circle in multiple shots, I wanted them to try more symbolic shapes, which is where the heart came from. I took multiple of them standing there doing the heart motion from the same spot, and in the end had 6 pictures I could merge together to make it look like all four did it in one shot. Since I shot so central in the field and had a lot of space with the tower, I decided to use it as a source of power fueling the love into the lights.
ReplyDeleteI think without question the concept of energetic love is shown in this work. Although hearts are a simple geometric shape, it holds much more meaning than just a square or a circle. I think having multiple people combined with this symbol shows a sense of family or relationships. After elaborating on it more, I think two hearts in an empty field might symbolize love a little easier, but this was mostly a project for me to incorporate my family into. There is also a wave of green lights coming from the tower, and an illuminated heart up top, so it's main subject is love being transferred through energy and nature into the people.
I think this work demonstrates the use of light and darkness in a cute and fun way. I am definitely biased because this was so funny and memorable for my family to do together (honestly they might have had too much fun). I think in terms of the editing, the lighting on everything looks realistic, and considering this is multiple images combined, everything blends nicely. I do think the angle of the photo could've been different and not so centered because then I wouldn't have to incorporate the tower so dramatically. I also will say that this image looks much clearer in a high-res/ larger version. The blending modes were extremely helpful when it came to layering each piece from different photos.
Love Tower blends art, technology, and symbolism in a way that reflects contemporary themes of connectivity, creativity, and environmental interaction. Using light to draw hearts speaks to the universal meaning of love, unity, and emotion, while the technological structure hints at our modern reliance on infrastructure and energy. This piece was created and shared to express energetic love in an artistic and powering way. The interesting thing about light in this composition that I learned, is that you can only create pieces like this at night. During the day (unless you are in a room with no windows and the lights off) there is no way to capture any light source other than the sun and the shadows or highlights its casting. In the dark or at night, light becomes such high contrast with everything around it that when exposed over a few seconds, the photo captures the entire trail, just like day time does with motion and blur.
ReplyDeleteTo me the most interesting works are Teleporter by Bryce Locaylocay and Nightprowler by Meg Neal. I think Teleporter is really cool because of how obvious and cleanly executed the concept is. The simplicity will influence me to really stick with one concept and do it strongly. I think Meg’s work is really beautiful and whimsical. The colors seem so bright yet so soft at the same time and the layering was executed perfectly. This work inspires me to want to play with more layers, more lights and more color modes.