More light writing stuff

Saturday was Earth Day-You're supposed to have turned off the lights and stuff that use electricity from 8:30-9:30. We did that, and my aunty gave us these industrial 12 hour glow sticks so I just played around with my Pentax and the 4 second exposure.

There's really no point to these so they don't make any sense.










I found flashlights.

Light Writing

Another camera technique that's pretty fun. Persistence of vision is the principle that makes the pictures in this entry "work," and the technique that produces these pictures is called light writing. It's like what you see in the Sprint commercials except that the Sprint guys make lots of the pictures and make play them as a stop motion movie.

Too lazy to read those articles? Ok, basically if you look at something, even for a little while, then look away, the signal that was sent to your brain is slow, so you see a sort of after image. That's persistence of vision. Need an example? Check out this Jesus illusion and check out the main site as well for some more optical illusions. They aren't all persistence of vision, but they're all pretty trippy. That's kind of what's going on in the camera when you set it on low aperture and a long shutter speed, like 30 seconds or even bulb.

If you take a picture with low aperture and long shutter speed at night, you'd get a picture that seems like it was taken at daytime, like the four second exposures from the Dupont hike and the time there was the power outage.

Now, get a flashlight, or some other bright source of light, and write or draw a picture while the shutter is open, and you get something like these pictures:

My first attempts at light writing-





I was holding the camera since I set it on bulb, so the background is blurry, and you can't see my hand, but in pictures that other people have made, they are in picture but are blurred, since they move around and the camera sensor is capturing all the light it "sees" while the shutter is open.

Spring break is finally here

I haven't hiked or actually done anything in a while, and yesterday Jared, Maxx, and I hiked Kuli'ou'ou Ridge to Pu'u O Kona. There aren't any good pics from yesterday because it was socked in up there. Anyways, I already did the hike before and I got pics on a clear day. You can check out the pictures as well as a description of the Kuli'ou'ou to Pu'u O Kona hike here.

Today, Maxx got stuck at home because he had to clean house, so Jared, Winston, and I hiked the Wiliwilinui trail today. You can see the pics and description here.

After two hours, we reached the end of the trail and the sign was there waiting to tell us: "End of Wiliwilinui Ridge Trail." Today was different though...

We continued on past the sign to reach the peak of the next mountain on the right. It was kind of slippery in places, but we survived. You basically walk along the edge of the mountain, so one wrong move would mean a long trip tumbling to the bottom. We also got attacked by all the uluhe ferns on the way to the unnamed peak, so our legs are all scratched up. I found a thimbleberry bush on the way to the unnamed summit, so I ripped out the whole thing and brought it home to plant. The clouds covered the mountain and engulfed us, and blocked the views of Kane'ohe, Olomana, Waimanalo, etc. We reached the unnamed peak and decided to turn around at the top because it just continued on, and we didn't feel like going some more. So back through the uluhe minefield, and we finally made it back to the end of the trail sign. We hung around a little while longer, and a mountain biker came up to the summit. We talked for a little while and then he was on his way. Jared had some kind of cheese-it snack mix that was really good, so the three of us finished the bag 2400 feet up at the summit of Wiliwilinui.

Since it's spring break now, I'm hoping to hike more trails, ones I've done before as well as new ones. We only get one week of break, but then again, we start school later than lots of schools on the island.