Previous indoor photo projects: Indoor Photo Project: The Mysterious Planet, Indoor Photo Project - Recycling at its Best and Free Heat, Indoor Photo Project - Water Gone Wild, Vividly and Colorfully Wild.

Flying through a Black HoleA Two Color Abstract Refractograph on Black I am hooked! You can read the definitions of photography, you can read almost all (landscape) photographers stating that it's all about light, you see light painting at dusk or night and the whole being about light gets so much closer, but then, you photograph light and light only in a pitch black room and the all about light statement hits you. Seriously, how could something be more about light than a photograph of light, a refractograph?

It all started for me on a flight reading the most recent issue of Popular Photography (February 2014). There, they had a short article on refractography. The photograph looked amazing and I had to know more. I ripped a strip of paper from the always included bookmark, the subscription card, and folded it over the page to refer to it later.

From the article it was only a short hop to Rob Turney Visuals and Rob's refractography tutorial. I watched it couple times and had to try it myself. Setting up on a workbench in the basement did not take all that long and I was soon seeing the magic happen in front of my camera. 

Needless to say, I was not all that excited once I saw my first attempts on a larger screen (note: shooting tethered would get you this initial feedback rather quickly). It still looked magical but also blurry and with questionable clarity and contrast. It was back to the tutorial, a few searches, a few ideas of my own, a little bit of work with scissors and back to the basement. It looked better and I was encouraged enough to try two light sources. But back on the computer, it was still missing the punch that I liked on the pages of the magazine. Back to the tutorial one more time, some more adjustments to the sub-one-dollar props, and back to the basement.

And there it was, another notch better! That's when I started feeling like a little speck of dust floating in space and approaching a black hole, getting a quick peek of the inside, and eventually being pulled in and seeing magic that never escapes the black hole and is never seen.

So how was this done? It's a really simple concept. You need a dark room, a camera without a lens on a tripod, glass surface to refract the light, and a pinhole source of light. Additional clamps and stands will help to make sure your flashlight and the glass do not move.

Have fun materializing your visions!

Equipment used:

Nikon D600, no lens, Manfrotto tripod (055MF3; replaced by 055CXPRO3 with the convenient Q90 column) and Manfrotto Ball Head (496RC2), SanDisk Extreme 32GB SD Cards, Nikon Capture NX2, small LED flash lights, A-clamps, light stand, paper, aluminum foil, pieces of wood of various thickness and sizes, various glasses with a stem, and probably more.

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