Slow it down

From being inspired by Chris Bradbury’s technique of capturing light trails and painting with light, has inspire me to play around with light up toys, bike lights, anything in the home, wi-fi light, washing machine light, microwave light etc got some pretty cool images…

Remote control helicopter, really hard to control in the dark, unable to see the camera. But managed to capture these, the light dot on the front of the helicopter is what has been captured, this turned many different colours, that is why these are multicoloured light trails. I set the camera to 16 second exposure.

The boyfriend then got involved and insisted my experimenting would not be complete until i have long exposures of all the light sources in the room, including lights he kept popping out of the darkness with….

These are with a black and white BMX bike lights

Too get this effect below, i changed the light settings on the bike lights, strobe, on and then off, etc. came out better than i expected!

I began to want to light up the room, or well certain parts of it, like a light source of energy has come alive and is travelling around the room, check out objects and lighting them up in the darkness so we can see and make some sense of the space, like a visual puzzle.

I had to move the light in slow motion across areas if i wanted them too be lit up, worked well after a few go’s takes a lot of practice however.

Got this effect by moving the white bike light under the chin of my face and moving back and forward side to side keeping the light under my chin, its created a very interesting look, like a traffic jam of cars or a city on a hillside from far away underneath a cloudy sky.Light trails have endless possibilities! and they are great fun to create, relying heavily on what light you use the exposure duration, and how the light moves.

For example,

The green thin trails of light where made from a wireless port connected to the computer.

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This was created using the washing machine light,

Gets me thinking, what if i attached a light source, say the bike lights to my dogs collar or harness? taking her out for a walk at night time may give me a whole new creative outlet and i get a lot more excuses to take the dog for a walk! which i love doing, i live in a very isolated village, rarely anyone comes to visit and sitting inside watching screens and doing Uni Work for two days straight really isn’t my cup of tea. So why not combine the two? learning certainly does not have to be boring, or a chore.

Tanky, tank, tanks.

Cant wait to show these tanks so blogging this whilst i eat my dinner of ham and pineapple pizza. Adding these images and updating the blog about the tanks we have, is really useful for us to look back and keep a record of what we’ve changed and what problems we are experiencing.

Currently in the 70 litre:

-2 Dwarf puffers also known as pea puffer fish

-2 Khuli loaches, very cool they look like snakes or eels and are great bottom feeders/cleaners rather than filtering the substrate ourselves all the time. (its a special plant nutrient rich substrate disturbing it constantly reduces the amount of nutrients left in the substrate for the live plants)

-6 newly added rainbow fish, stunning little things! (pic to come next)

4 armano shrimp, our undeniably helpful clean up crew! they eat the algae off the plants keeping them clean and healthy and generally anything else in the tank they will scrap with their tiny claw like hands or pincers any algae into their mouths, its fascinating to watch!

On the right hand side is the smaller 20litre tank that we originally had the puffer fish in before purchasing the larger 70litre, we have slowly added fish into the 70litre with the Puffs, things are going well!

Our smaller tank currently with cuttings from live plants from our 70litre tank! growing well underneath the manta ray sun light (post to come of what it is bracketed with)
Currently home to Huff and three of the platy fry from my tank, the other platy have been passed on to friends, and respectable fish stores that we visit frequently and always go and check up on the guys we have handed over, we do miss them! we would rather let them go to a new home than suffer cramped in a small tank.

Update, So far….

The new dwarf puffer fen is settling in well! thank goodness! we had to remove Huff as it turns out they are both male, however some individual dwarf puffers, irrespective of gender can have very difficult personalities (they are incredibly intelligent) and ‘fin nipper’ attitudes can develop. We moved Huff because we have been watching intently on the tanks progress and unfortunately caught Huff a couple of times barrel rolling around the tank with Fen in his mouth, needless to say that is not what we want.

Fen is a more docile male, even though he is much bigger than Huff. Fen has also already been courting with Geeta our female puff as soon as he was introduced to the tank, whereas Huff would only show interest in Geeta to chase her off or nip at her body, he wouldn’t let either of them eat easily either so it was safe to say, a move was necessary! Now Huff is happily in a tank of his own, with a few platy, who he has never shown any quarrels with! ( he just doesn’t like other puffers it seems).

Now the tank seems to have calmed down a lot, the gobies are less frantic and the kuhli loaches we have are coming out from hiding at lot more, more pictures to come! just extremely tired and off out now for a longboard ride before dinner! hope you’ve had a good sunday!

How Moken Children See With Amazing Clarity Underwater (Video)

Going mental over this blog! so much interesting stuff! I never knew this was actually possible but i have wondered, as i love to swim and i love being under the water, i have always wished to be able to spend more time under the water, and also actually see well (as i wear contact lenses) here humans are actually training themselves at a young age to be able to do this, why wasn’t that included in my £15 a week swimming lessons! instead i would wibble wobble like jelly on a plate at the side of the pool more times that i can count and then would jump into the water, i would have preferred to have learnt how to see underwater….

Higher Learning

Ever wondered why your vision gets blurry when you open your eyes underwater?

Well, as you descend down into the water, light levels quickly drop. Your eye reacts by opening the iris more to let in more light, which in turn widens your pupils, blurring your vision.

Moken children, however, learn at a very young age how to override this natural reaction, closing their pupils as much as possible rather than opening them wider.

This allows them to see twice as well as you or I underwater. However, recent studies suggest that any child can learn this skill.

The Moken people are a semi-nomadic seafaring people who live in and around the Mergui Archipelago, a group of around 800 islands in the Andaman Sea claimed by both Burma and Thailand.

To read more on the Moken, check out this article from Survival International.

Feature image courtesy of BBC One.

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WOW. The Man Who Hugs Wild Lions Brought a Go-Pro This Time (Video)

What initially inspired me to Use film within my Digital narrative project for universtiy. WISH i had the £300 pound spare to buy the Go Pro camera, there is so much i would do with it. But alas, i do not get any financial help from the government with my university studies, i am constatntly struggling just to pay petrol to be in uni as much as they want us to be. And the amount of time they want us to use to study for the degree leaves me with very little time even to get dinner for myself some evenings or have and commit to a job that would supply me with enough money to survive and attend uni, BA Hon’s degrees are certainly not a walk in the park. But all that considered i am finding it highly mentally engaging, and actually enjoying the opportunities being given to me to test myself and push my creative processes.

Please check out my other blog pawsforthought at http://morvenelizebethkynoch.wordpress.com for videos of my world from a small dogs perspective.

Higher Learning

Kevin Richardson is known as the lion whisperer, and I think that term is perfectly accurate. He has literally made himself part of a pride of lions, as well as a group of hyenas.

Watch Kevin hug, cuddle and play with these wild predators. He also attaches Go-Pros on the backs of some of the lions and hyenas, so you can see things from their perspective as well.

If this isn’t the most amazing intimate footage of lions and hyenas you’ve ever seen, I’d be very surprised.

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Volunteering

Went to millers ark to check out photographic locations as its where I have managed to obtain some volunteer photography work experience! Yey! I used to work as a farm hand for them years ago and loved it! I am revisiting this time with my camera to take some updates photos of the farm and its animals for free for liz who owns the farm and the animals! Below is a picture if my favourite tenants, the goat pen!

Of course u did not hesitate to jump right in with them and was immediately greeted by a very small Pygmy goat

Who proceeded to lick my hand and stare at me hopefully, almost like a begging dog! With only its hooves touching my knees (so small) no bigger than a spaniel. Stay tuned for more of millers ark farm in the mean time.

If you have the time please check out their site 🙂 http://www.millersark.co.uk

Growing strong

The fry platy from my tank and my blue and orange/green tuxedo platy have grown up and they are showing some awesome colours! got about three females and two males.

The gobys from Maidenhead aquatics http://fishkeeper.co.uk are settling in well, The male above loves the gundom model and sits on it often eating the live food we feed them, and the female really likes her new rock cave below,

Bearing in mind these guys are quite small so taking images through glass without a tripod is pretty tricky they also move quite fast too, we shall be feeding them live food soon however, and i plan to submerse the underwater camera into the tank and record the feeding frenzy! stay tuned for that!