Started in a dark studio space, with black cloth placed on the floor. LED christmas lights were placed on the cloth. Started with camera's lens, very close to lights. Pulling away in a circular/sweeping motion, creating this effect. It was really a balance of time, rotation and distance to the lights. In camera custom white balance, was registered off a green plastic box. White balance was taken, under incandescent lighting. This pumped up the colours and vibrancy. Probably took 60 exposures, this being one of the more interesting ones. Image was rotated and resized for web.
Statistics
Place: 55 out of 104 Avg (all users): 5.2398 Avg (commenters): 6.4000 Avg (participants): 5.2593 Avg (non-participants): 5.2335 Views since voting: 954 Views during voting: 378 Votes: 221 Comments: 7 Favorites: 1 (view)
Initial impression: Quite surreal, interesting swirling vortex, great colours, looks like a lot of fun to shoot.
Technical: Love the 'zippers' as Deb (Melethia) calls them. I imagine this is due to your starting in close and slowly rotating out. Intriguing amount of extra blur on the orange/yellow trails at the right - was that section of the lights closer to the point from where you were focused? Composition is somewhat unorthodox, but the swirls help draw you in.
Artistic: The vivid colours really stood you in good stead here, and I find that the light trails look almost more like shed snakeskins than zippers. I might have gone for a slightly tighter crop on the left - I keep seeing that softness where the lower left swirl starts into the pic. Like the long exposure, and knowing it was probably done handheld, shows a certain level of fearlessness. Which is good!
Overall: Glad to see an image that has not been post-processed to death! Having said that, a hit of saturation is often a good thing and may have just given that slight extra pop. I also think pixelpig's suggestion could be an interesting idea to experiment with in the future.
If you want to have some more fun, replace the black cloth with a couple of reflecting surfaces. Wrinkled silver mylar is perfect. I love this. The centralized starting-point adds the illusion of a focal point & the colors are energetic. more! we want more!
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
