The surreal art of ‘unnatural lighting’

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2020/09/the-surreal-art-of-unnatural-lighting/

by tumidpandora • 6 years ago

347 87 6 years ago

nationalgeographic.com

cauliflower2718• 6 years ago

Paywall :(

pavel_lishin• 6 years ago

Not for me.

JMill• 6 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20200831190005/https://www.natio...

echelon• 6 years ago

Hopefully one of the other links works for you. These are absolutely gorgeous.

Drone halos are an idea I've never seen before, but they're brilliant.

groby_b• 6 years ago

They are gorgeous, but I debate brilliance. Pretty much any introductory class to photography covers "light painting" - long exposure, fixed subject, movable light source.

(I don't say this to distract from the artistry, just to point out it's a well-known technique, and halos are on the more common side when painting with light)

simonsarris• 6 years ago

edit the url to place a period after .com so it reads:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com./magazine/2020/09/the-sur...

kencausey• 6 years ago

Why does that work?

yboris• 6 years ago

My favorite un-paywall: http://archive.is/phpaX

jf• 6 years ago

Running an ad blocker seems to help

mnw21cam• 6 years ago

No paywall here. But also no pictures. What use is an article about photos, without any pictures?

mikece• 6 years ago

Off-camera light and creative lighting are two of the most powerful ways to create surrealism in a medium that, in theory, if capturing what is literally happening in the real world. Realizing that photography literally means "writing with light" has inspired my dabbling in the hobby of photography more than anything else!

crazygringo• 6 years ago

This is super-interesting conceptually, and fascinating to look at.

But I can't help but feel you could get exactly the same output by compositing daylight photos and gently photoshopping them in, as by compositing these drone-illuminated shots and layering them in.

When you're trying to achieve this type of artificiality anyways, this seems like an awfully expensive and complicated way to do it...

etrautmann• 6 years ago

I initially agreed with you, but I think it would be hard to get the texture of the illumination correct. The quantity of light and how elements shade each other/etc, might be difficult to get right. For many applications it might not matter though

kevin_thibedeau• 6 years ago

You can't replicate the shadows from low altitude point lighting with sunlight.

munificent• 6 years ago

I've done a lot of landscape photography with natural light—daytime and nighttime—for the past twenty years. Daylight would look nothing like these.

It's easy to underestimate how sophisticated our intuitive subconscious perception of illumination is. We've evolved over millenia to have a really keen sense of different kinds of light and we can tell when things are different even if we aren't sure why.

aaronbrethorst2• 6 years ago

Reuben Wu’s Aeroglyphs is one of my favorite series of photographs from recent memory. Really stunning work. https://reubenwu.com/projects/25/aeroglyphs

neilpanchal3• 6 years ago

I asked myself, would the same images, if rendered in CG or photoshopped, lose their charm/appeal? My conscience responds with a resounding "Yes". So, then the process itself must be the art and not the end result. The process being actually flying the drone, taking long exposures instead of pressing buttons on a keyboard and moving the mouse to generate or modify an image. Why is the former process more appealing than the latter? Both are intellectually challenging processes. I always struggle with this internal dialog.

aaronbrethorst2• 6 years ago

So, then the process itself must be the art and not the end result

I think they're both aspects of the art, as is the feeling they give you. See, for example, the $120,000 banana duct-taped to the wall.

falcolas• 6 years ago

And if there was no indication whether the image was CG or real?

ska• 6 years ago

Art is not an artifact alone, context is important.

nkoren• 6 years ago

A 3D artist I follow on Instagram has done similar things in CG, and I find them quite compelling. Admitedly the locations he sets them in are well-known to me, which probably amplifies the effect, but I think it's legitimately interesting work nonetheless.

https://www.instagram.com/sethithy/

Crespyl• 6 years ago

I think to me a significant part is that one process boils down to a game of pushing numbers around (a fun and engaging game, certainly), and the other process requires physically engaging with the logistical difficulties of the world in a way that produces a more directly relatable story. That story may not be part of the image directly, but is sort of implied, and subjectively makes the photographs more immersive.

neuralzen• 6 years ago

There is also something to be said about the subtle lighting when actually shooting such shots. Doing it with CG is perhaps approachable, but there is a point of diminishing returns when more and more time is spent to close that last few percent of the "realism" gap. Case in point, I took this long exposure photo in about 15 seconds, provided a bit of setup and specialized hardware. A CG version would have taken (I think) hours and still not quite have the same subtleties in lighting. https://imgur.com/e4UWiqz

usrusr• 6 years ago

A simple and perhaps intellectually disappointing explanation is rarity: plenty of CGI with unnatural lighting, we value CGI that gets it right. Plenty of photographs with natural lighting, we value the photograph with an artificial tweak.

abathur• 6 years ago

I think we (mostly) have the emphasis backwards, and that this is part of your discomfort. We like to focus on the artist, art-object, art-process, art-technique, art-tools, and art-temples.

I think it all makes more sense if you focus on the art-experience.

It is OK for something that wasn't intended as art--like a torn sign, or a true accidental technical glitch--to trigger an art-experience for you. It is OK if knowing--or not-knowing--details about a technique, technology, or process affects whether you have an art experience.

offsign2• 6 years ago

Dabbled with similar photography (* not as good as Wu's), and think it would be a challenge to achieve similar results in Photoshop.

Light painting in the sky is one thing, but getting the light source to simultaneously "paint" the foreground in a realistic way -- so it's suggestive how the two physically interacted -- requires another level of PS wizardry (at least beyond me).

* https://photos.app.goo.gl/9ED17BWiRfieVrap8

petascale• 6 years ago

For me, the photos in the linked article look great no matter what the process was to create them. I don't see why they would lose their charm if they were CGI, simply because we tend to know whether we like a picture or not within a split second of first seeing it, while we generally don't know how they were made until later.

But for the pictures in the GP link, I don't think the pictures by themselves are all that interesting; to me almost the entire interest stems from knowing how they were made.

Somewhat comparable to pictures posted on HN a while back that went from "ho-hum, another portrait" to "that's actually interesting" by knowing that these were not real people or real photos, but rather computer generated portraits. (https://petapixel.com/2019/09/20/this-company-is-giving-away... )

So I think charm/appeal can stem from several sources, like pure visual impact, but it can also stem from an appriciation of the process behind it. And I see people sometimes change their minds on how well they like a picture - in either direction - based on how simple or complex they think the process was, even if the picture is identical. (Compare say a picture of a wild wolf pouncing its prey vs the same picture after you've learned that it's stuffed animals and the scene was arranged by the photographer.)

sukilot• 6 years ago

Art stimulates the non rational parta of the mind. Your conflict is due to your internal inconsistency, brought to the surface of your consciousness when you you brought your mind to bear on the impossible-looking photograph.

xoa• 6 years ago

I asked myself, would the same images, if rendered in CG or photoshopped, lose their charm/appeal? My conscience responds with a resounding "Yes". So, then the process itself must be the art and not the end result.

Taking a slightly different tack from the other responses so far: I don't think your second sentence there follows from your first. You are implicitly asserting that "rendered in CG or photoshopped" would and even could in fact produce the exact same art, and thus the process is the only differentiator. But I think an important limitation and value of doing this in the real world is that we cannot in fact actually perfectly reproduce the real world yet down to the visual spectrum limit. We can produce quite good facsimiles for sure, particularly zoomed out or in motion. But for high quality still photography of complex natural environments doing all the physics and replicating all the creation and weathering processes and so on exactly down to micron type levels is hard. Noting does reality like reality for the time being.

So I do think part of the charm/appeal here is precisely that the photographer is photographing something real, so you can really drill deep into the details with the knowledge that a human hand is revealing and highlighting those details, but did not craft them. Whereas with CG a human made decisions about every single bit of it (if only in choosing what algorithms/seeds were used or what result to accept for further work). Which itself can be extremely interesting! But they're genuinely two different things and I think do speak to different aspects of people.

kebman• 6 years ago

This is a pretty normal view. I've been a photographer and videographer since I was about 16, and worked freelance and in magazines all over my country before I got into teaching and IT.

If you read any film theory book, you'll eventually come accross Cahiers du Cinéma and André Bazin, one of the philosophers who most greatly influenced the Nouvelle Vague movement of cinema in France.

He would argue that the second you even point the camera at something, that's when the editing of reality starts. So in the end, what really matters, is the expression you're looking for. So work on that, and worry less about the tools you use to get there.

Many have since tried to challenge this view in various ways, including the Direct Cinema, and Cinema Verité movement, and even up to guys like Lars von Trier with his rather stringent Dogme manifesto. Because when you've mastered all other forms, the only way to challenge yourself is to give yourself artificial limits.

So do you morally have to say no to CG or photoshopping? Absolutely not. It's a tool like any other. You can use it to enhance the experience. And with todays digital cameras, it is often needed to glean the experience you had when watching the subject in real life, kind of like the expressionist painters of yore, who would strive to paint the feeling they had with the subject, rather than illustrate "the truth." Or you can willfully subject yourself to artificial limits, because it's a challenge.

With that said, I think the photos shown here reveals brilliant and inspired creativity with new techology and tools, and in the end, that's what it's about: To make something fantastic out of perhaps untraditional tools, either because it's a challenge, or because you have a grand vision—or both.

Anyway, I hope this gives you some inspiration to pick up your camera (any camera, even the one on your iPhone), and challenge yourself. All the best!

paganel• 6 years ago

For what it’s worth those images look like photo-shopped to me, too perfect, that’s why they don’t tell me anything (or close to anything). I’m not saying that they are digitally modified, but because they look close enough to that kind of photos then the interest is just not there anymore. The same way some person knowing/remembering all kind of minutiae is a lot less interesting compared to 40-50 years ago, we all now have access to google (i.e. a technical enhancement in our lives similar to what Photoshop means for images).

jnwatson• 6 years ago

Truly outstanding works of art. Absolutely stunning.

joshspankit2• 6 years ago

Amazing work. Had no idea drones were that precise

joshspankit2• 6 years ago

On a side note: I’ve never seen a simple photo gallery get messed up so bad.

On my iPad the left/right arrows don’t work, images overflow the screen borders, and tapping on specific images brings up the wrong image.

Portrait and landscape

nathancahill• 6 years ago

Next Tycho album cover?

sandworm101• 6 years ago

This is nothing new. There are various areas of professional photography that have long used long exposures to selectively add light. Sometimes called "flashlight painting", the photographer can use a literal flashlight to fill in shadow areas selectively during a long exposure. This can produce images that are not physically possible using static light sources. The use of a drone over landscapes is a simple extension of this longstanding studio technique.

https://www.photigy.com/school/how-to-use-light-painting-in-...

bluntfang• 6 years ago

This is nothing new.

I feel like this comment has some good content and could hold its own without this statement. It just feels a little antagonistic. Everything has been done before, we're all on the shoulders of giants.

grandphuba• 6 years ago

This is no different from the "first" comments in youtube or when sharing a meme to a friend that has already seen it and says "I've seen that already" instead of discussing essence of the content itself.

Retric• 6 years ago

I appreciate a quick summary of a longer comment. Being aware of the context I can more easily skim without missing anything.

sradman• 6 years ago

The idea was born from a mistake. One night near Death Valley, California, Wu set a camera to make a time-lapse series in the dark. A pickup truck drove by and washed out the scene with its harsh headlights.
At first, says Wu, “I was really annoyed. But when I looked at the images, I was fascinated. Here was artificial lighting in a natural environment.”

The quote above indicates that Wu stumbled upon the technique by accident but, sandworm101 is correct, this technique has been known and widely used for decades. I know the technique as "painting with light" and a Google image search should convince any skeptics. Add "stars" to the search and you will see that the technique is often combined with star trails.

Using drones is a nice enhancement. The criticism about originality doesn't make Wu's images any less spectacular.

EDIT: The Luminous-Landscape article Introduction to Landscape Astrophotography [1] includes a section on "Light Painting".

[1] https://luminous-landscape.com/introduction-to-landscape-ast...

spaetzleesser• 6 years ago

Maybe Wu didn’t know about light painting before this happened. A lot of people rediscover things. I found out by accident that you can see the Milky Way in all its glory when you do long exposures.

But yes, this is an old technique. I guess the big difference is that drones can write shapes into the air and also reach locations and angles you can’t reach with traditional light painting.

blasdel• 6 years ago

When done with video it looks like a real-world raytracing demo: https://www.stratusleds.com/aerial-leds

legerdemain• 6 years ago

The artist is the Reuben Wu from the band Ladytron. Interesting that his "second act" is getting the metaphorical spotlight.

StavrosK4• 6 years ago

I've always considered Ladytron his second act.

dylan6043• 6 years ago

I love the fact that tech is so cheap that tinkerers can do some interesting things now. Light painting has been gaining from the simple use of a light source to illuminate something for long exposure photography for a while now. However, the creative means of lighting with the new toys that cheap tech is allowing for has made it even more fun to play. Also, the sensitivity of the new camera sensors make have helped.

I'm old school, my favorite light source for light painting is the full moon. Everything looks daylight until you notices the give tell-tales like smoothed out water to indicate long exposure, or night stars in the blue sky[0]. If timed correctly, you can get a moon strike which is where it starts while the moon is below horizon, and then the image starts to change as the moon rises[1]. I wish I had a link of live action video shot with nothing but moonlight.

If you have an actual budget, you can bring out enough lights to colorfully light up the side of a mountain[2]. (I have nothing to do with the making of this video)

[0] https://vimeo.com/241441999 [1] https://vimeo.com/241600503 [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReMPjkJdvMY

h6d-100c2• 6 years ago

While a lot of the tech so cheap, the cameras that Reuben uses cost 60K+ plus ;) He was the primary photographer phase one used to launch their new mirrorless/tech camera body.

Not that it probably makes a substantial difference in achievable end product probably.

dylan6043• 6 years ago

Fair play, but camera prices are not part of the tech I was talking about. I come from the motion picture world, so a $60K+ camera is also quite cheap. I've used lenses that cost >$60K each, so maybe I'm desensitized to camera prices.

I was talking about cheap electronics to make the LED builds that make for cool blinky blinky things. OSS running on commodity hardware in the form of Arduino/Pi/etc allows for dependably repeatable motion control. For a few hundred dollars, you can make your camera appear to float and run all day on a single LiPo battery charge. You can literally make your camera fly with very affordable drones. You can buy BT/WiFi components so you control all of this with your phone. If you were a hacker 20 years ago, your inner youth would be drooling over this stuff.

bmitc• 6 years ago

This is a totally different style, but I have recently become a huge fan of James Turrell. There the light is "real" (i.e., it's not captured through photography), but often using naturally produced sunlight along with controlled colored light systems in tandem.

He's also building a massive art piece at Roden Crater. It's a big mind boggling no one has used it for a sci-fi movie yet. If you ever get a chance to see one his skyspaces or his artwork, I highly recommend it. It can be very entrancing and meditative.

iamdbtoo• 6 years ago

I experienced this one at LACMA a while back and it was incredible.

https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/james-turrell-light-rei...

thinkling• 6 years ago

I prefer the natural bird flight time lapses ("Ornitographies") of @xavibou

http://www.xavibou.com

https://instagram.com/xavibou

30minAdayHN2• 6 years ago

dang! these are so creative. thanks for the pointer. i always wondered about capturing flights' time lapses. this is much harder than the flights. i wonder what inspired them.

abalaji• 6 years ago

This is some really beautiful work. Anyone know where we could get some posters and support the artist?

notatoad• 6 years ago

artificial light in nature is the basis for one of the coolest ski films i've ever seen: https://youtu.be/4DjdJydl-ds?t=92

jedimastert• 6 years ago

I find I have few words to describe that video better than "dope as hell"

tspike• 6 years ago

As beautiful as the images are, I can't help but wonder if we really want to be running loud, bright drones in the middle of the only quiet, peaceful areas that still exist.

EForEndeavour• 6 years ago

If it helps at all, the article mentions that the photographer uses exposures "as long as 30 seconds," so these drones aren't in the air all that long. Unless and until hundreds of copycat drone-light photographers start swarming deserts and lakes, I don't feel too bad about the light and noise pollution incurred to produce this shockingly creative landscape photography. Besides, I bet the effects of a single drone flying for a few minutes pales in comparison to the headlights, engine sounds, and emissions of the car used to get to and from the photo location.

fiblye• 6 years ago

Unless and until hundreds of copycat drone-light photographers start swarming deserts and lakes

If a few of these start trending on twitter/instagram/whatever, there will definitely be hundreds of people doing this.

It's already hard to enjoy a trip to many places without a "bbwweeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" reverberating overhead.

h6d-100c2• 6 years ago

These are in a lot of places where you must get permission/ permits for any kind of commercial drone photography, and at night too, so this will probably not big as a big a nuisance as just normal people tooling around with drones wherever they live.

allenu• 6 years ago

Interesting photos. The artificial lighting makes many of these look like Star Trek: TOS sound stages, especially the one of Moel Tryfan.

amelius• 6 years ago

Does their lighting technique only work on inanimate objects?

dylan6043• 6 years ago

Typically, your light painting source is very low power so that it builds up over the course of the exposure without over exposing. Doing long exposure with people is hard. The subject would be required to stand extremely still. Any movement will cause the subject to be blurry as they will literally be appearing in multiple places within the image. If the subject moves too fast, they will completely disappear from the image. We use this technique frequently in music videos. I've also experimented with using flash strobes to expose the subject in the split second even though the shutter remains open. At that point, your subject can move out of frame and still be exposed from the flash.

jbarham• 6 years ago

See also the Ball of Light series by South Australian based photographer Denis Smith: https://www.denissmith.com.au/ball-of-light

xwdv3• 6 years ago

You know what would really blow me away? If someone came up with a way to convert a 3D polygon mesh into a drone's flight path so that it could render any sort of 3D object into a scene with timelapse lighting. Light rendering.

StavrosK4• 6 years ago

I wrote a small script to do that with 2D SVGs, there's nothing difficult about doing it in 3D.

xwdv3• 6 years ago

But did you make the drone fly the path?

zvr• 6 years ago

Intel has a solution where you provide the 3D models (static or animated) and they automatically generate flight paths for dozens/ hundreds of drones, each acting as pixel/voxel. Of course with collision avoidance between them.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/technology-innovatio...

paxys• 6 years ago

It's amazing how the tiniest of touches change these pictures from average nature photography to futuristic sci-fi.

Animats• 6 years ago

Painting with light has long been used to make shadowless photographs of industrial and military components.[1] It's used there for clarity, not artistic effect.

[1] https://maritime.org/doc/threeinch/img/plate001.jpg

andrelaszlo• 6 years ago

The photo of Crowley Lake made me curious. The columns that look carved out of the stone at the shore are not man-made at all: http://www.geologyin.com/2017/01/mystery-of-crowley-lake-col...

meigwilym• 6 years ago

It's nice to see north Wales crop up on HN. Moel Tryfan and its quarry is one of many in the locality. I'd usually call it unremarkable, but this photo has taken it to somewhere else.

The surreal art of ‘unnatural lighting’

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