Light Painting Photography Night at the Library
Light Painting Photography at the Library
Yet another artistic adventure brought me to Görlitz. To be precise into a very beautiful library in Görlitz. By invitation from Danilo Eberhard Strauss we got this incredible chance to see an incredible architectural highlight of his city. Here you can see the Lens Swap – Light Painting Making off
Change your Mind – Camera Rotation Light Painting at the Library
As the easternmost city of Germany, Görlitz is the place to be if you’re after a generous dose of culture. Together with friends from Saxony I spent a night in the museum/library. Thanx to the great Organization of Danilo Strauss and company of good friend Felix Leda from Ferpixelt, Feli, and Natalia I got to spent a wonderful time light painting in Görlitz.
Where did we go?
Görlitz has a rich architectural heritage on display. (there is to explore lots of historic remains of Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Art Nouveau times).
The Barockhaus is the most significant Baroque building in the region. It hosts the artistically formed “Oberlausitzische Bibliothek der Wissenschaften” Engl: Upper Lusatian Library of Sciences and its collection mostly dedicated to science.
Founded by Karl Gottlob Anton in celebration of the enlightenment, it contains around 140.000 volumes, manuscripts and handwritten books as old as from the 11th, documenting the history and culture, art, nature, economy and society of the region.
Whether you are a book worm or not, this architectural Gem inspired my curious sense of engineering in wonder. We had access to the wooden vaulted shelves filled with handwritten, copper printer medieval science books.
The Lens Swap
The one book came to my attention, titled “Upper- Lower Lusatia Historic, Politics and other oddities” with the illustration of a laying man holding a string of fish. His relaxed pose and framing was the ideal detail to be part of that complex technique: lens swapping. The book was written by Samuel Grosser and published first on the 31st of December 1714. Want to have a read? Go to: https://play.google.com/store/books/d…The technique involved exchanging lenses and swapping tripods during a single exposure.
What do we plan for the Photo? This time a Lens Swap Light Painting.
The photograph was shot with a CANON EF 70-200mm F2.8 lenses set to F32. The challenge there is that as precious as the book was, it was sitting behind a glass window for protection. Meticulously and with several attempts to avoid mirroring reflections, I was able to illuminate exclusively the man from the complex illustration made in the 17th century.
The next step – Lens Swap: the Camera was then detached from the Canon lens and carefully attached to a LAOWA Zero D 12mm lens. With a hat on the lens fully covered, the camera was moved to the other room and mounted on the second tripod. The entire procedure was practiced about four or five times until it worked.
The final results effort:
In the end the entire choreography took 173 seconds in. This was the most interesting photograph from that evening from its complexity and symbolism.
We later discovered the illustration of the man was a copper engraving, the earliest form of printmaking. My process for “stamping him into my lenses holds parallelism across over 400 years!
If you like to see the behind the scenes Making Of you watch the following video.
Looking for the Book of Light
The Book of Light
As time went very very fast we realized we did not have so much time but so many ideas. Here is one of those very quick and easy to accomplish results. Yet we wanted something that relates to the spot we were in.
One of those easy and rewarding Light Painting techniques is using a Tube. In the video below you can see how that worked.
Many thanks to the Die Freunden der Görlitzer Samlungen e.V., who trusted on us to photograph their cultural heritage, run through their corridors of history in the dark. Special thanks for staying up so late on such a cold evening.
My shout out to Danilo Strauss, for holding and sharing access to Görlitz precious gems as well as to Feli our model and Felix Leda for a great collaboration here.
Thank you Natalia for filming and helping with the edit.
Thank you all. With the hope you found the topic Lens Swap – Light Painting somewhat inspiring and interesting. Thank you for visiting my website.