Lighting the Bulb

With my culling project finally drawing to a close, I’ve been getting excited about starting to create new images. When my friend Mike suggested we join a photo walk put on by the “Renegades” I thought ‘Why not! Something completely different could be a lot of fun.’ And was it ever!!

The Albany Bulb was a former landfill area and is now a park with paths along the water front enjoyed by dog walkers, cyclists, artists, homeless, informal concert goers and even a production of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The urban art is the biggest draw. A collection of rebar, driftwood, mural’s, graffiti, statues, paintings and other hidden treasure dot the landscape.

We arrived with plenty of time to explore and begin taking photos of the art before the sun went down. Yet… it wasn’t until the sun disappeared that the magic of the area became apparent. The vapor lights of the city gave the sky it’s orange glow and with flash lights in hand we set out to paint the area with light.

A recent lecture by Dave Black impressed upon me "If you want an image to be more interesting, only light part of it." And so after we worked the basic silhouette we started to go crazy. Pulling out color gels for our flash lights, setting our timers and running to all angles to throw light around. Most of it was trial and error with more images to trash but in the end we came away laughing with glee and a with few new and fun photos to add to our collections. I can't wait to go back and work the other statues in the area. There is way more than you can cover in just a few hours time but it sure was fun to try!