Research

After really enjoying my playing with the light from traffic I discovered these guys; Lichtfaktor. They use a range of specifically modified LED and other torch wands is probably the only way to describe them to create Light Graffiti.

I asked at college if they had anything similar but I don't think they knew what I was talking about. I believe Lichtfaktor actually make these torches themselves.

Below is a short demo of one of their many round the world tutorials;

Their imagination is really inspiring as they seem to know instinctively what shapes to make with light that to us humans we can not recognise but to a camera lens makes perfect sense.

Gregory Crewdson 

Is best known for his elaborately stages surreal scenes of American homes and neighbourhoods. I particularly like some of his work because however un-natural the manmade objects seem the sky is always the tell tale that this is real.

The whole feel of his photos are very eerie and you think that something very sinister is about to happen or already has.

Another photographer Sophy Rickett seems preoccupied with what art historian Victor Stoichita once called 'Skiagraphy'- writing with shadows. 

In the most extreme of Rickett's images, particularly those in black and white, its as if a minimal quantity of light has slowly against some sort of resistance, seeped into them, just the least amount that could possibly allow the surface of the photograph to register the presence of an image at all.

 

In Rickett's colour pictures darkness still dominates but light gets turned up a few notches to flare up in artifiicail glory, with poisonous greens and sulphurous, Mephistophelean yellows.

'I'd like to encourage the viewer to track, to use a filmmakers terminology, rather than pan' Rickett has said 'to move along the picture rather than stand away and survey it from a fixed point'.

Florian Maier-Aichen

Maier-Aichen's obvioucs digital manipulations of his photographs have an unexpected effect. Rather than hiding or obscuring technical inconsistencies in the photograph, the 'imperfections' digitally input by the photographer draw the viewer closer from the distant position they'd usually assume in order take in an extensive panorama.