Still at the "mind-licker dome" dance event I tried using a flash for the first time. I held the flash in my left hand above the camera and pointed it up. I has set the time to 3 seconds and fired the flash manually by counting the seconds. What I got was serendipity with a guy coming out from between two folks spinning orange light poi holding a light bulb.

Fire Swords 4901
Before discussing light dancing images in more detail, I want to digress a bit and talk about how I started fire dancing myself and how that led to an unexpected and wonderful collaboration.

I had tried spinning the poi, without fire, and found that it is not a skill that come naturally to me at all. However, I've been doing fencing and other forms of sword work for many years. It wasn't long before I decided to build myself a set of fire swords.

I set up the tripod, paced the distance and asked a friend to press the shutter, count to 3 and fire the flash. Then I lit my swords, started dancing and asked him to fire away.

Light sword 9110

Fire works great outdoors, but indoors, or while practicing, lights work better, or at least safer. For interesting images, lights often work better too. So I also built a pair of "light swords." These are simply wooden sticks with battery powered colored lights taped to them.

In October of 1986 I was performed with the Sphyre of Promethus using fire outside and with these colored light swords inside for Lizzie West's Howloween ball. Her encouragement and enthusiasm have meant a great deal to both my fire dancing and my photography.

When I got inside I found myself being photographed by all kinds of people as I danced with these light sticks. One in particular had a full size DSLR on a monopod, but instead of planting it and making a time exposure, he was dancing with it. He came over to me, quite excited and showed me what he'd captured. It turned out he had been doing light paintings for 20 some odd years and was greatly inspired by this new way he'd just found of making light paintings. His name is Peter Anger and the image he made that night he called Equivalent.

One thing led to another and after a couple of joint studio sessions as well as a session done in the gallery where the show would hang with several dancers on hand and much discussion and further work, we put on a collaborative show at the Davis Gallery on the Stephens college campus in Columbia, Missouri.

"Colorfall" is an 8 second exposure at f14 of several dancers playing with the light toys during the shoot made in the Davis Gallery. Photomanipulation was not used to create the water color effect, that is a result of the moving camera and moving photographer and moving dancers.

"Flock" is a ten second exposure at f14 of the same dancers with a different selection of light toys.

The "Warrior on 9th Street" is actually a four second exposure at f11 of the interior of the Cherry Street Artisan between dances.

Spirit Dance 5279 was taken near my pond soon after the first studio session with Peter. I talked my daughter into dancing with the lights and found that a 7 second exposure at f4.5 gave me this.

Here I'm using a tripod and counting on the dancer to come up with the image.

This picture of Dan, a professional ballet dancer, was taken at the second studio session with Peter Anger. This one was a 13 second exposure at f16 and I moved the camera, rotating and shifting my position during the 13 seconds before firing the flash manually.

Inspired by my first studio session with Peter Anger, the next weekend I talked my daughter into playing with some light swords I had build and experimented with firing the flash manually part way through the exposure, as close to the end as possible. This was taken at f4.5 for seven seconds.

The previous light paintings used battery powered lights. Glow sticks, the chemical based things that glow for a few hours once you activate them, put out very little light. The original of this one is nearly completely black. Work with the curves tool allows me to bring out quite a bit of interesting detail as Budda celebrated her 9th birthday with her first attempt at spinning. However, there are some pronounced color shifts, which might or might not be acceptable. Here I think it works.