Light-painting With Bioluminescence

It’s alive! I have been using flashlights to create light-painting pictures for many years, but when I received the invitation to go to IPAF Festival in Mexico to experiment with bioluminescence, I was thrilled!

I knew the task wouldn’t be easy, as the light emitted by the plankton is very low, but with a bunch of friends, we managed to get a few shots. And most of all, we had incredible fun playing in the water like kids.

Yes but what is it?

These little creatures can produce light through chemical reactions. It happens when they are activated, either with encounters in the water, by hitting the shore or simply by running in the water like crazy. And this is where it gets fun!

So we spent part of the night playing in the ocean, trying to capture the light. For the circles, we simply ran around the girls. Every trail of light is created by us, doing big movement in the water for 30 seconds.

It would have been much easier to create a similar effect by using flashlights but the goal was to use bioluminescence as the single source of light. Just to make things clear, the subjects are not lit by the microorganisms, but rather by the ambiant light (stars, lights from the distant houses).

Thanks a lot to the bioluminescence team for this awesome night: Kim Henry, Millie Caron, James Trotta-Bono, Sophia Moelk, Cedric Taillon, Guillermo Castellanos and IPAF Festival.

More info: ericpare.com

Light-painting With Bioluminescence

654views

Eric Paré is a canadian visual artist who has been performing light-painting all around the world since 2013. His work has appeared on CNN, MTV, PetaPixel, CNET, Vice, Fubiz, TechInsider & TEDxMontreal. Eric has hosted workshops and conferences in Mexico City, Dubai, San Francisco, Toronto, Boston and NYC. Most of his pictures are lit by hand in a single second with no intentional external source of light.

Read less »