This weekend I was a part of Chalkle‘s Space Camp; a night and a day devoted to all things space related. There were proper astronomers with proper telescopes there, but my area of expertise is a little less technical. By day, I helped people to make egg landing modules from straws, string, balloons and all sorts of waste materials, which were then crash tested with bottle rockets. At night, the planned ‘star trails’ photography was stymied by fast moving cloud, and the steel-wool sparks photography by a stern fire ban. Instead, my husband and I gave groups of people a quick introduction to playing with light and long exposures to achieve “special effects”.
These are a few examples I managed to snap between explaining the cameras’ m button to people. Most of are 8-15 second exposures, and made using cheap coloured finger led lights and glow bracelets from the $2 Shop, some <$10 laser pointers, and (for the multiple exposure ones) with an old flash unit – by pressing the “test fire” button two or three times per photo.
A Little Art 