Jump to content

Grazing the surface


stefan1

Projected refractions from a shotglass filled with akvavit. A collimated light beam graze the surface and a surprising level of detail appear. It is also quite unstable and the slightest vibration will make these things move all over the place. Negative image and colormap rotated.


From the category:

Fine Art

· 71,602 images
  • 71,602 images
  • 306,991 image comments


Recommended Comments

The red color here is pretty close to the light source I used, but it

may be off-putting to some. Is it sufficiently abstract not to make

you think of late night horror flicks?

Link to comment

Since this is hardly my area of expetise I am going to refrain from rating it so all I am going to say is that I my first impression is that I don´t like it at all.

 

Maybe I am just not "getting it" Also no offense intended, like I said, work in this genre is not my cup of tea.

Link to comment
I think it's very nice. Inkjet print on watercolor paper as large as the file will allow without degradation of detail and edge. You will need at least three images like this, but different, if you know what I mean. Very cool... t
Link to comment
Thank you both.

Lárus: am I right to interpret your comment that you don't care for abstracts like this in the first place, or is it something about this one that particularly disagrees with you? I'm just really curious what reaction you have.

Tom: I see what you mean - I probably will go back and record some more of this phenomenon since I have just barely scratched the surface here. It was so rich that I actually got out the video camera instead when I first discovered this, follow the link for an idea of the range of possibilities. One problem here is that the pattern is so unstable that it is hard to get the exposure time from the faint light I get back from the setup I have currently, but that can be solved somehow. A short series, nicely printed will be nice - see what my tired old photoprinter can produce...

Link to comment

Well yes and no. Keep in mind that I am a complete layman in abstract so please take my comments at face value, I really have no idea on what is good abstract work and what is not.

 

All I can say is that I have seen abstract work that appeal to me and this doesn´t really do the trick for me. I think the white backrond for instance doesn´t seem right for one thing and one thing I always find myself doing when viewing an abstract is that I try to "see" something in the pattern and I can´t really see anything there. Again, no offense intended.

 

I am curious about your name. Are you swedish?

Link to comment

Lárus: yes I am Swedish, but I've lived in the US for over 10 years now. Again, I value your honest opinion and don't worry about offending me. I don't think we need to be experts on abstract art to evaluate whether it speaks to us or not. I understand your point about the white background, this is why I tend to convert these to black and white, but this had a little bit of tonal range so I wanted to preserve that.

999133.jpg
Link to comment
The reversed image works, but not as a "photograph". So what. It is art made with a camera. Just change your thinking. It won't hurt, I promise :^)

The positive image (black background) has such high contrast that the subtler tones are lost. The reversed image is much more delicate. I am hesitant to use the term here at photo.net, but it is more "painterly", and that's a good thing for this image... t

Link to comment
Your cheapest source of a collimated light source may well be a red-light laser pointer, which is what I used in this photo.
Link to comment
When light painting with red laser light pointer, I find I need extremely long exposures. Might I ask how long this exposure was? I also note this was shot on a digital cam, so wouldn't a long exposure render unacceptable noise?

The actual visual design looks to me like a fine haired but wide paint brush stroke, with a stippled stroke!!

One of my light painted still lifes captures refractions of laser pointer, in the wine and glass - here - middle pic bottom row.

Link to comment
I typically need to max out my poor little Canon G3 when I do these things, 15 sec exposure, aperture wide open, but I try to keep the equivalent iso at 50 (the lowest value) to keep the noise down. With these parameters I usually manage to fill the luminosity histogram pretty far out to the right and I often shoot in raw mode which helps theoretically but not very much in practice.

I think there are two things I have going for me as compared to the shot you gave as an example from your portfolio: (1) there is no competing light so there is no problem with balancing the light against other sources, (2) as the refracted light is projected and reflected off a white screen, the camera captures most of the power that left the laserpointer I use, a smaller fraction gets scattered elsewhere as compared to a situation in which you are relying on the light scattered in (say) a glass - you will be able to capture only a small part of the total emitted power (does that make sense?).

You might want to take a look at this version of laser light scattered in a wine glass: Glass triptych. That too had a pretty maxed-out exposure.

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...