Light Paint

Following Haline's previous adventures in long exposure photography, she thought that it would be great to try it out as a group, and we all thought, why not? Looked fun. So on Sunday, the 27th January, equipped with LED lights, keyring lights, torches, free light sticks from the Brian Wilson concert on opening night of Sydney festival 2008, party sparklers, and whatever else we could find that would light up; and also importantly, a camera which allowed manual shutter speed settings - we went to a local playground near Haline's house to take some long exposure photos.

Being mainly the tech guy in the team, I was there more for the ride than to create anything artistic, but I ended up really enjoying it creatively, and was quite proud of our works. I loved how it was so accessible! It felt like anyone could do it. All we needed to do was set up the camera on a tripod, set the shutter speed to 30 seconds or so (and on some, turn the flash on so we could see the people in them) - and then just go crazy! Anything you draw in the shutter speed time frame, with the lights facing the camera gets captured by the camera - creating pictures out of thin air.

Thin air is such a great canvas - you can essentially use it anywhere, and it's so freeing to be able to move around in the space of your drawing, not affecting what you had drawn previously. I also really liked the largeness of the space. We could just move around heaps - playfully running and jumping around, waving our hands around like idiots - abstract art? (one of my favourites). We could also create art pieces that were larger than life - guy running, monsters chasing Tina and chopper (and superman) over skyline. Although, we also did take some photos individually, for example Will's pic, David's pic and Haline's pic; I think the group shots were most fun. It was the suspense of not knowing how everyone went, until we all finished and saw the final shot. It was always a fun surprise!

Overall, it was an awesome time - so easy to do, so much freedom in what we could create, and just liberating to create something out of nothing. It was such fun, flexing our creative muscles and just hanging out with friends. In the aftermath, we also found that during the Proboscis workshop, the crazy stuff photo we took was a great starting point to describe Popper Box and what we do. –Tak

More photos here on our Flickr account.