Night Reflection 1.8

About this picture

Leaving the comfort of the hotel room in the middle of the night to brave the cold and shoot with the full moon for a little while. As we lost track of time, that moment of placidity created a perfect undisturbed mirrored image, the only of its kind in the series, as it is extremely rare to have conditions allowing for suspension of time.

About this remastered version

This picture from 2017 has been fully remastered in September 2021 using latest RAW image processors, better equipment, years of editing experience but mostly, my new eyes. In late 2020, I had the chance to get my eyes fixed, and that totally changed the way I see pixels… for the best!

Bolivia, 2017. This is lit by hand in three seconds. This is one of our classics, one of our best images ever and at the same time, it’s been made in a naïve way, in extremely harsh conditions… in the cold, in the middle of the night, at high altitude. But somehow everything aligned into this unique creation. A shape that I have never been able to replicate. The way Kim’s arm frames into the twirl is just too perfect. I can’t help to think that I have simply been lucky. And that luck came because we've put everything we had into this project. We did so many of those to achieve this single one. It’s a single occurrence out of the tens of thousands of shots we have made over the years.

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About the Night Reflection One series

This genesis series is the result of a creative process that has been evolving over the past 8 years. Crafting light by hand to create imagery that magnifies reality in a single exposure is at the core of our projects. These outdoor tube light-painting creations testify the importance of two things that inspire my photography journey: a love for light-painting as an artistic expression and a love for landscapes that evoke the vastness, mystery and beauty of nature. Each image is the result of a short exposure of a few seconds during which Kim, a contemporary dancer and my creative partner, stay still while I move the light behind her.  Combining in a singular way light-painting and landscape photography, the process looks like a performance of dancing light and human stillness in the silence of the night.

This series illustrates the importance of the impact elements of nature have on the art we are creating. We love to shoot near water for that reason, even though it usually complicates the process of creation. Just as every trace of light made by hand is unique and impossible to replicate, when the location allows for reflection of light, the specific conditions of that moment (be it wind, depth of the water or waves) change the reflected trace of light in a unique way, contributing to the creation of a slightly altered perspective of reality. 

We need a purpose to travel and projects to keep learning and moving forward. Since 2015, our journey through outdoor tube light-painting has been giving us the opportunity to push our own limits and stay outdoors for long hours through the cold, the wind, the mosquitoes and other unpredictable challenges to experience, create and capture unique moments of magic after sunset, seeking to inspire others to go explore and play with lights.