Lightmark

[snarkpuppie]

I love light graffiti, but mostly have only seen it created in urban environments.

The images Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke have created in remote wilderness are absolutely beautiful. I'm still trying to figure out how they did it.

Comments

[damien_wise]

For starters, I've gotta say they're some incredible photos! :->
Ta for the links, cos I love light graffiti.

Apart from admiring those photos for their beauty, it's fascinating to try and figure-out what they've done from a technical point of view.

In the "Making of" section, it shows they used a medium-format analogue camera (looks like a Hasselblad, one of the world's best and the type the sent to the moon!). Using a larger negative means practically no film-grain, which would normally accumulate badly in a long exposure. But jeez, it's hard enough to time really long exposures on a modern camera!

The little, eight-pointed star-shapes that halo the brighter lights are a refraction pattern created as light passes through the lens's aperture. In this case, it's an eight-bladed aperture.

Based on the star-trails (the length of the arc as the earth turns) in some of those pics, I estimate that they held the shutters open for 3-4 minutes, as much as 5.
Before I cropped this shot to improve the composition, it had some trails