Painting with Light

Spent an amazing night doing light painting in photo class. We gathered at the studio at 6 p.m. to practice this technique in which you set your camera and then paint the light in front of your scene with a flashlight or really any type of light. Because of the long exposure time of the camera, you get these funky effects that add a sort of painterly or cartoonish quality to the photo. It was really fun to experiment with it in his studio. And then, at around 8:45 p.m., we started on a 20 minute walk to a specific part of the Castle where Jan knew the light would be good between 9:15 and 9:45. He kept stressing that we had only a very small window of time to catch the best light. He then told us to set up, frame the shot, set our apertures and shutters and then go. It was pretty much a lot of experimenting. And the photos are certainly wacky! But, it was really neat. The best part about the whole thing is that as you do the "light painting" in front of the camera, you look sort of like a mad magician with a magic wand dancing around. You can't stand still because you don't want yourself to appear in the phot--just the light. So there's the hilarious scurrying action that everyone is doing in front of their tripods...it was quite a fun sight to see. Anyway--this light painting is really Jan's main medium. He looks very free and artistic when he dances around with the flashlight. And his results are certainly much more controlled and done on a bigger scale than ours. We will continue working on this technique Thursday.

Today--sat out at a winebar by the vineayrds of the Castle. There was a great view of the city and we had lunch and tried different wines. It felt like sitting up there we were surveying our domain--the owners of the castle!

Had a great lecture from this Czech scholar on Feminism in the Czech Republic both before and after Communism. There are lots of paradoxes because of the way that in some ways, Communism granted more equality to the sexes! It was only after 1989 that women started to feel the effects of being forced into gender specific roles due to the way money-earning dictates roles in the family, etc. The Feminine Mystique became really popular in the Czech Republic after 1989--even though it had been big in the U.S. in the 60s and 70s.There are a lot of other facts--I will try to include them in some point on the blog. Basically, one of the most intriguing lectures we've had so far.

Good night!