Incredible Steel Wool Light Paintings Done to Look Like Rorschach Ink Blots

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Light-painting, like time-lapse, is a genre of photography that is packed full of talent, making it really hard to pick quality work to feature (if you haven’t already, check out this list of 10 amazing light-painting photogs you should follow right away).

We were thrilled, therefore, when we stumbled across Nicolas Rivals‘ series of steel wool light painting Rorschach tests dubbed, simply enough, Light Rorchach.

There aren’t a lot of ways to describe this series without using the words like ‘awesome,’ so forgive us if we seem overexcited. The thing is, steel wool light painting is certainly not a new idea, but this is an application that we’ve never seen before and one that turned out some amazing results.

To create the shots, Rivals’ burned steel wool and spun it around during a long exposure set up to capture a perfect reflection in water. As he describes it, “the symmetry of the reflection in the water causes the viewer to question the reality of photograph, and yet it is right here for anyone to capture.”

Here’s a look at the photographs he’s put together for the series thus far:

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Like traditional Rorschach ink blots, these images are not merely artistic; they can also be interpreted from a psychological viewpoint.

“By turns, the viewer is both the observer and the observed,” writes Rivals. “You ultimately see some of your own personality, and therefore yourself… These masks seem to shout. “Tell me what you see and I’ll tell you who you are.”

To see more of Rivals’ work, be sure to check out his website by clicking here.

(via SLR Lounge)


Image credits: Photographs by Nicolas Rivals and used with permission.

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