Stavros' Stuff

A few years ago, I set out to reinvent photography. I didn’t have a good idea how to do this, I just knew I wanted to make something original, and combining photography with my electronics skills seemed like a good way to do that. It failed at reinventing photography, but I succeeded in writing a clickbait first sentence, and the process was lots of fun too.

It all started one night, when I was having drinks with a friend and looking for something new to do with photography. Our conversation went something like this:

• I need to do something original with photography.
• Mmhmm.
• Maybe I could combine technology and photography to create something new, but what could it be?
• Hmm.
• I know! I’ll make a light stick thing.
• Mmm.

The idea was great, I would use a LED strip to display images in mid-air, like those persistence of vision displays. I could set the camera to record a long exposure, then move the strip and trace a pattern in the air. I had never seen anyone do this before, so the first thing I did was what everyone does when they have a groundbreaking idea: I searched the web to see if this already existed.

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Hello! I took another photo! This time it’s rather dark, it’s a forest, at night, with an eerie light coming at the end of the path, through the fog. It has taught me three things:

1. You don’t need many sophisticated adjustments to achieve most of the effects you will want to achieve. A few simple adjustments here and there can go a long way.
2. I used to think that, when people said “I wanted to convey this specific feeling”, or “I wanted to achieve this objective with this piece”, it was bullshit. I see now that, oftentimes, you have a specific idea in mind and work towards it, as I did with this photo for the first time, for me.
3. I shouldn’t dismiss mobile phones so easily. I didn’t have a camera with me at the time, and it was either “take the photo with the phone” or “don’t take it at all”, and I went with the former. It’s probably my favorite photo of mine so far, so you definitely won’t hear me dissing mobiles again. They can be very useful under specific circumstances (mostly when there’s a lot of light and you won’t need a large print).

In this post, I am going to show you the process from the initial, unedited copy, all the way to the final edit. Here’s the latter:

Let’s dive into the actual process, to see how it was created.

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WARNING: This post has nothing for anyone, it’s just me ranting about photography. Turn back now, you have been warned.

Apparently, photography is now a thing I like. It is also a thing I like a lot, so I have been doing it a lot. I’m not very good at it, but I’m blessed with not caring much about how good I am at a thing I like doing, which is apparently how you get good at things. I decided to write about photography-related things, even though I’m wildly unqualified, because I like having a sort of progression log.

A few days ago, I stumbled upon the ethereal photography of Darren Moore, and immediately fell in love. The outworldly appearance of his photographs

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