This past weekend saw my camera and I experience a new aspect of my photographic journey … shooting in black light.
Black light paints and bubble mixture, really challenged the ability of my A7 to capture what was going on in an otherwise dark environment. To say the experience was fun would be a dramatic understatement of significant proportions.
Both of my co-conspirators braved the shoot in pursuit of art and between their own artistic painting skills and a true sense of derring-do that left modesty at the door, they delivered on a scale that you had to be there to witness.
Brittany (that’s my A7) worked her magic in too hostile an environment for lesser cameras and produced some excellent shots. In the space of less than two hours, she managed to grab over 1,600 shots, almost all in focus, that took me two full days to just sort and process, afterwards.
Choosing between such a large number of seriously good shots, is no simple task and while each model got well over a 100 keepsakes, I have chosen the ones shown here as being modest enough to hopefully offend no-one, while showing some of what the camera was able to capture.
As one of the young ladies expressed to me, skin tone was captured almost as if we were shooting Avatar, and the paints popped to the camera even more than they appeared to the naked eye. Then there were things that I could see with my eyes that were completely invisible to the camera.
The whole setting, black-lighting only, beautiful and adventurous young models, and a definite feeling of being engaged in an art project, translated into a win that more than met my dreams for the evening.
I hope you enjoy the tiny selection at the end of the blog.
As I drove home after the shoot, I was on a creative-high and I marveled at what I had witnessed in the form of black-light-sensitive paints and bubble mixture/liquid. I thought about how important it was that these liquids reached a level of luminescence that allowed the camera to work some of her real strengths in the area of low-light photography.
And I began to think about how in life we are so well served to have someone bright and luminous in our lives. Someone, who brings out the best in us and makes us want to reach our own new heights.
Some people are so bright, they cast a shadow behind us.
I have been so lucky in life to have found a few of those people and I cherish them as being precious to my soul.
When someone in your life shines so bright, it is hard not to want to be a better person. We improve our performance and we live more meaningful lives.
They become an accelerant to the fire within our souls that drives us to new heights.
Some people shine out so bright that we can see things more clearly than we could without them. We see new avenues, new possibilities, new opportunities. And we feel emboldened to explore them.
And once we see something that is possible, we need to aim ourselves at it and reach for it with all we are worth. Because in many ways these sources of light in our lives are our guides, our mentors. They show us what is within reach and they lead by example to reach for it.
Yet sometimes, these sources of light are our muses and their light is designed to shine within us, inspiring us to find something within us, that we have kept in the dark.
Either way, we should definitely seek out those that illuminate.
Whether guide, mentor, or muse, their light shines our path ahead and strengthens the shadow we leave behind. I have often thought that you can see a person best for the shadow they leave behind.
… just a thought.
