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The surreal art of ‘unnatural lighting’
- cauliflower2718 6y agoPaywall :(
- pavel_lishin 6y agoNot for me.
- JMill 6y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20200831190005/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2020/09/the-surreal-art-of-unnatural-lighting/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200831190005/https://www.natio...
- echelon 6y agoHopefully one of the other links works for you. These are absolutely gorgeous. Drone halos are an idea I've never seen before, but they're brilliant.
- groby_b 6y agoThey are gorgeous, but I debate brilliance. Pretty much any introductory class to photography covers "light painting" - long exposure, fixed subject, movable light source. (I don't say this to distract from the artistry, just to point out it's a well-known technique, and halos are on the more common side when painting with light)
- simonsarris 6y agoedit the url to place a period after .com so it reads: https://www.nationalgeographic.com./magazine/2020/09/the-surreal-art-of-unnatural-lighting/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com./magazine/2020/09/the-sur...
- kencausey 6y agoWhy does that work?
- kbr2000 6y agoLikely a web-server misconfiguration (check out name-based virtual hosting[0]). Adding a trailing dot after the TLD (this signifies the root of the DNS naming hierarchy) works fine, and you're referring now to an absolute name (FQDN). How this get handled afterwards at the webserver side, depends not just on the resolved IP, but on the name itself (which is passed from client to server in the HTTP Host: header). And that's where this might fall apart if the administrator didn't provide for this situation. [0] https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/vhosts/name-based.html https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/vhosts/name-based.html
- yboris 6y agoMy favorite un-paywall: http://archive.is/phpaX http://archive.is/phpaX
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoDid you even bother to check whether images were visible in your link before you shared it? Retarded cunt.
- jf 6y agoRunning an ad blocker seems to help
- mnw21cam 6y agoNo paywall here. But also no pictures. What use is an article about photos, without any pictures?
- mikece 6y agoOff-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!
- crazygringo 6y agoThis is super-interesting conceptually, and fascinating to look at. 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. When you're trying to achieve this type of artificiality anyways, this seems like an awfully expensive and complicated way to do it...
- etrautmann 6y agoI initially agreed with you, but I think it would be hard to get the texture of the illumination correct. The quantity of light and how elements shade each other/etc, might be difficult to get right. For many applications it might not matter though
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoYou can't replicate the shadows from low altitude point lighting with sunlight.
- munificent 6y agoI've done a lot of landscape photography with natural light—daytime and nighttime—for the past twenty years. Daylight would look nothing like these. It's easy to underestimate how sophisticated our intuitive subconscious perception of illumination is. We've evolved over millenia to have a really keen sense of different kinds of light and we can tell when things are different even if we aren't sure why.
- aaronbrethorst 6y agoReuben Wu’s Aeroglyphs is one of my favorite series of photographs from recent memory. Really stunning work. https://reubenwu.com/projects/25/aeroglyphs https://reubenwu.com/projects/25/aeroglyphs
- neilpanchal 6y agoI asked myself, would the same images, if rendered in CG or photoshopped, lose their charm/appeal? My conscience responds with a resounding "Yes". So, then the process itself must be the art and not the end result. The process being actually flying the drone, taking long exposures instead of pressing buttons on a keyboard and moving the mouse to generate or modify an image. Why is the former process more appealing than the latter? Both are intellectually challenging processes. I always struggle with this internal dialog.
- aaronbrethorst 6y agoSo, then the process itself must be the art and not the end result I think they're both aspects of the art, as is the feeling they give you. See, for example, the $120,000 banana duct-taped to the wall.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bluetwo 6y agoThere is an argument that since no-one actually PAID $120k for the banana, then it actually was not worth that amount.
- superhuzza 6y agoPeople did buy the banana. Obviously a very thin market, but that's what was paid. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/maurizio-cattelan-banana-collector-1728009 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/maurizio-cattelan-banana-c...
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- sandworm101 6y agoThis 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. https://www.photigy.com/school/how-to-use-light-painting-in-product-photography/ https://www.photigy.com/school/how-to-use-light-painting-in-...
- bluntfang 6y ago>This is nothing new. I feel like this comment has some good content and could hold its own without this statement. It just feels a little antagonistic. Everything has been done before, we're all on the shoulders of giants.
- grandphuba 6y agoThis is no different from the "first" comments in youtube or when sharing a meme to a friend that has already seen it and says "I've seen that already" instead of discussing essence of the content itself.
- Retric 6y agoI appreciate a quick summary of a longer comment. Being aware of the context I can more easily skim without missing anything.
- sradman 6y ago> The idea was born from a mistake. One night near Death Valley, California, Wu set a camera to make a time-lapse series in the dark. A pickup truck drove by and washed out the scene with its harsh headlights. > At first, says Wu, “I was really annoyed. But when I looked at the images, I was fascinated. Here was artificial lighting in a natural environment.” The quote above indicates that Wu stumbled upon the technique by accident but, sandworm101 is correct, this technique has been known and widely used for decades. I know the technique as "painting with light" and a Google image search should convince any skeptics. Add "stars" to the search and you will see that the technique is often combined with star trails. Using drones is a nice enhancement. The criticism about originality doesn't make Wu's images any less spectacular. EDIT: The Luminous-Landscape article Introduction to Landscape Astrophotography [1] includes a section on "Light Painting". [1] https://luminous-landscape.com/introduction-to-landscape-astrophotography/ https://luminous-landscape.com/introduction-to-landscape-ast...
- blasdel 6y agoWhen done with video it looks like a real-world raytracing demo: https://www.stratusleds.com/aerial-leds https://www.stratusleds.com/aerial-leds
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoThe 42 mouthbreathing retards who upvoted this useless paywalled garbage need to be savagely executed but I’ll settle for a permanent ban.
- legerdemain 6y agoThe artist is the Reuben Wu from the band Ladytron. Interesting that his "second act" is getting the metaphorical spotlight.
- StavrosK 6y agoI've always considered Ladytron his second act.
- dylan604 6y agoI 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. 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. 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) [0] https://vimeo.com/241441999 https://vimeo.com/241441999 [1] https://vimeo.com/241600503 https://vimeo.com/241600503 [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReMPjkJdvMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReMPjkJdvMY
- h6d-100c 6y agoWhile a lot of the tech so cheap, the cameras that Reuben uses cost 60K+ plus ;) He was the primary photographer phase one used to launch their new mirrorless/tech camera body. Not that it probably makes a substantial difference in achievable end product probably.
- dylan604 6y agoFair play, but camera prices are not part of the tech I was talking about. I come from the motion picture world, so a $60K+ camera is also quite cheap. I've used lenses that cost >$60K each, so maybe I'm desensitized to camera prices. I was talking about cheap electronics to make the LED builds that make for cool blinky blinky things. OSS running on commodity hardware in the form of Arduino/Pi/etc allows for dependably repeatable motion control. For a few hundred dollars, you can make your camera appear to float and run all day on a single LiPo battery charge. You can literally make your camera fly with very affordable drones. You can buy BT/WiFi components so you control all of this with your phone. If you were a hacker 20 years ago, your inner youth would be drooling over this stuff.
- bmitc 6y agoThis 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. 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.
- iamdbtoo 6y agoI experienced this one at LACMA a while back and it was incredible. https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/james-turrell-light-reignfall https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/james-turrell-light-rei...
- thinkling 6y agoI prefer the natural bird flight time lapses ("Ornitographies") of @xavibou http://www.xavibou.com http://www.xavibou.com https://instagram.com/xavibou https://instagram.com/xavibou
- 30minAdayHN 6y agodang! these are so creative. thanks for the pointer. i always wondered about capturing flights' time lapses. this is much harder than the flights. i wonder what inspired them.
- abalaji 6y agoThis is some really beautiful work. Anyone know where we could get some posters and support the artist?
- notatoad 6y agoartificial light in nature is the basis for one of the coolest ski films i've ever seen: https://youtu.be/4DjdJydl-ds?t=92 https://youtu.be/4DjdJydl-ds?t=92
- jedimastert 6y agoI find I have few words to describe that video better than "dope as hell"
- allan_golds 6y agoPaywall
- Sam_Harris 6y agoPlease don't post links to paywalls.
- tspike 6y agoAs 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.
- EForEndeavour 6y agoIf it helps at all, the article mentions that the photographer uses exposures "as long as 30 seconds," so these drones aren't in the air all that long. Unless and until hundreds of copycat drone-light photographers start swarming deserts and lakes, I don't feel too bad about the light and noise pollution incurred to produce this shockingly creative landscape photography. Besides, I bet the effects of a single drone flying for a few minutes pales in comparison to the headlights, engine sounds, and emissions of the car used to get to and from the photo location.
- fiblye 6y ago>Unless and until hundreds of copycat drone-light photographers start swarming deserts and lakes If a few of these start trending on twitter/instagram/whatever, there will definitely be hundreds of people doing this. It's already hard to enjoy a trip to many places without a "bbwweeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" reverberating overhead.
- h6d-100c 6y agoThese are in a lot of places where you must get permission/ permits for any kind of commercial drone photography, and at night too, so this will probably not big as a big a nuisance as just normal people tooling around with drones wherever they live.
- allenu 6y agoInteresting photos. The artificial lighting makes many of these look like Star Trek: TOS sound stages, especially the one of Moel Tryfan.
- amelius 6y agoDoes their lighting technique only work on inanimate objects?
- dylan604 6y agoTypically, your light painting source is very low power so that it builds up over the course of the exposure without over exposing. Doing long exposure with people is hard. The subject would be required to stand extremely still. Any movement will cause the subject to be blurry as they will literally be appearing in multiple places within the image. If the subject moves too fast, they will completely disappear from the image. We use this technique frequently in music videos. I've also experimented with using flash strobes to expose the subject in the split second even though the shutter remains open. At that point, your subject can move out of frame and still be exposed from the flash.
- jbarham 6y agoSee also the Ball of Light series by South Australian based photographer Denis Smith: https://www.denissmith.com.au/ball-of-light https://www.denissmith.com.au/ball-of-light
- xwdv 6y agoYou 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 rendering.
- StavrosK 6y agoI wrote a small script to do that with 2D SVGs, there's nothing difficult about doing it in 3D.
- xwdv 6y agoBut did you make the drone fly the path?
- StavrosK 6y agoYes.
- xwdv 6y agoWhy not make a post and harvest some karma? Would love to see the pics.
- StavrosK 6y agoUnfortunately they didn't turn out very good and I didn't try again (maybe I should). Here's a build log from the first attempt (click "build log"): https://www.makerfol.io/project/m8xrLUp-light-painting-with-drones/ https://www.makerfol.io/project/m8xrLUp-light-painting-with-... I subsequently made a harness for the Mavic air too, that's the one the script was written for.
- zvr 6y agoIntel has a solution where you provide the 3D models (static or animated) and they automatically generate flight paths for dozens/ hundreds of drones, each acting as pixel/voxel. Of course with collision avoidance between them. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/technology-innovation/aerial-technology-light-show.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/technology-innovatio...
- paxys 6y agoIt's amazing how the tiniest of touches change these pictures from average nature photography to futuristic sci-fi.
- Animats 6y agoPainting 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. [1] https://maritime.org/doc/threeinch/img/plate001.jpg https://maritime.org/doc/threeinch/img/plate001.jpg
- andrelaszlo 6y agoThe 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: http://www.geologyin.com/2017/01/mystery-of-crowley-lake-columns-solved.html http://www.geologyin.com/2017/01/mystery-of-crowley-lake-col...
- meigwilym 6y agoIt'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.