What if there existed a lightbulb that you could completely control using your phone? And by “completely control”, I don’t mean simply switching on and off. I mean being able to precisely control the brightness of the light emitted, and even the exact color of the light.
It sounds crazy, but it’s a light bulb that’s actually being developed. Created by Phil Bosua of San Francisco, the LIFX is a Wi-Fi enabled LED light bulb that can be wirelessly controlled using an iPhone or Android device. While Bosua imagines a plethora of home and commercial applications, it’s the bulb’s photographic potential that we find very exciting. Read more…
Flickr user Henrique Feliciano Silva made this neat photograph by hollowing out a light bulb, filling it with water, hanging it upside down on his balcony, and shooting his neighborhood through it with a shallow depth of field.
Photographer Jon Beard has a terrific set of photos called “Burning Bulbs” in which he breaks lightbulbs and photographs them with the filaments exposed.
The set includes the following photograph, titled “1UP Mushroom“:
This photograph recently became extremely popular on Flickr, amassing over 100,000 views. Beard tells us,
I’m a photographer and computer guy from the mountains of Virginia. My favorite kind of shot is one that gives a person a new perspective. Whether it’s a far away landscape, an unusual angle on something familiar, or a close-up of an everyday item, if it changes the way they see the things around them, it’s a success.
The idea for the 1UP came while going through shots from a broken bulb series I had shot with the intention of adding color. When I saw that one, the mushroom shape was undeniable and as a lifelong gamer all I could see was green with white spots.
DIYPhotography has a great tutorial on how to shoot this kind of photograph, but Beard also created a great behind-the-scenes video tutorial showing us his process:
If you decide to try out this idea, please be very careful – both electricity and glass can be hazardous to your health.
