Making Pictures with Electricity, Gardens and a Camera

The center of our vision is packed with cones which are sensitive to color amplified by light. The lower the light the less color we perceive.  Colored lights set against a backdrop of  darkness  appear particularly vivid by virtue of the principles of  isolation and contrast. This holds true with pigments as well as electrified light. This summer the light installation artist Bruce Munro has a project at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.  if you couple Munro’s  installations with the  Longwood’s regularly scheduled colored-light fountain shows  then, you have an exciting opportunity for photography experiments.  Munro’s lights use fiber optic cable filaments. Some of the filaments are curled within clear globes, others are made into bouquet-like sprays or are twisted into clear plastic bottles.  Congregations of these lights generate a fantasy landscape as seen in example 1.

By using a serpentine design in handling my camera and a  prolonged exposure while walking alongside a stretch lights in the dark forest I can convert example 1 into example 2.  Observe example 2 has better continuity, more coherence with a serpentine design, more illumination, and more rhythmic movement than a still or static photograph.

example 2.

Munro also uses the serpentine design laid out by the gardeners of Longwood in their planting. He arranges individual bouquets of fiber optic filaments among the plants. During the day they are camouflaged among  flora but, in the evening they awaken with their artificial light.  In the sequence of examples that follow you will see how I begin with a slight camera movement as in example 3. In examples 4, 5, and 6 I moved my camera more rapidly and broadly  while taking the shot. I simultaneously moved  the camera in a loose serpentine pattern to exaggerate the effect of the zig-zag composition. I also make short hesitations while moving the camera during the exposure. This creates the effect of multiple trees (see blurred golden trees). In examples 3 through 6 I progressively move my  hand faster while taking the picture.  And, as I move my hand faster it becomes more difficult for me to make my zig-zag gesture.  As a result, the image becomes more attenuated and  lateral and, less serpentine.

example 3.

example 4.

example 5.

example 6.

Longwood Gardens also offers a festival of  electrically illuminated and colored fountains. In example 7 I have a linear perspective alignment of fountains. This arrangement suggests deep space.  I use  just a little vertical  hand movement here.

example 7.

In example 8 I begin by pulling the camera down quickly from the sky then, freeze the camera on the fountains. The effect is the canted red stripe across the image. The color complements of the  yellow-red lights against the blue background exploits the effects of simultaneous contrast for heightened color.

example 8.

In example 9, I again set up a progression of fountains and, I sustain the exposure to give a blurred brilliance to the color and forms. In example 10 I dance the camera about pausing with it in a pattern of hesitations  to make  blurred echo effects. In a future blog I hope to show you how these effects can stimulate ideas for painting.

example 9.

example 10.