Lights! Lights!

In response to both my "Lights!" post and Julie Heyward's comment to it, I have received the following by email from AcerOne and thought I'd reproduce it here; I've edited it down slightly, but I hope that I've kept the sense intact.

“ You didn't need to try very hard to convince me to try the continuous light source with beeping light – we will most certainly be giving that a go. The only problem is doubling up on the lights we have already been borrowing from our outdoor pursuit friends – decent bright ones are between £ 10 and £ 20, and to double up on both arms and legs would equal 8 lights, which in turn could be £100. I'm sure we will work a way around it though...

I say 'we' as the project is an ongoing collaboration between myself and fellow street artist FLX [...clip ...] ... and we are thinking of working on ... [ contacts made during a previous exhibition] to allow us to display some of the images we come up with in disused shop windows around the city. That is the plan, anyway; who knows how successful we will be, but it is definitely worth a try...

One other thing which is trivial really – it wasn't a skateboarder (this time!) but a Parkour (street runner) – in effect it is skateboarding, just without the skateboard!

Julie's comment is interesting – the lights we used on the Jump Trails images were attached to both hands and ankles. He was running too fast to capture any definition of his hands, but maybe that would change with a more powerful light that 'strobed'. If you look back at the second image in that post, you can make out where he jumped from (right to left), how his arms swung to propel himself, and how his feet landed with a little forward bounce... This is what we are after!

As a side note, I'm trying to get my head around 'strobing', not to be confused with the small cycle lights we are already discussing, but using powerful flash units off of the camera and set of by remote radio. This would (hopefully!) freeze some of the action and join the light trails up to an image of the street runner/skateboarder/breakdancer...

It's all still very much an experiment and we are enjoying pushing the ideas forward..”

It occurs to me that the "modelling light" (it flashes rapidly at low power) on a conventional camera top flash, manually triggered by an assistant out of frame, might conceivably provide AcerOne and FLX with scope for some initial exploration of the strobing idea. I shall write and suggest it now ... and perhaps do some experiments myself.