glowing

Singapore is home to a number of bioluminescent fungi. Out of over 148,000 known species of fungi across the world, over 70 of them are known to exhibit bioluminescence.

Sometimes the world blows you away. It was like that for us when we first started shooting sea fireflies on rock formations back in 2016. The visual power of these creature lighting up the shoreline was just stunning. It made us want to learn more about these creatures and think about innovative ways of shooting them.

I often hear my students lament about how if only they could travel to the rainforest they would find something really interesting to photograph. I tell students “look around where you live – there are wonderful things to photograph everywhere”. The photographers that work with local species often obtain shots that are unobtainable from casual travels.

Japanese photographer Ryo Minemizu sometimes spends up to 8 hours underwater in a single day, keeping his body as motionless as possible while pointing his camera and lens at tiny marine organisms. His photos of glowing sea life are part of a new exhibition titled Jewels in the Night Sea.

The Gemini Observatory on Hawaii's Mauna Kea dormant volcano has a cloud camera that's used to monitor sky conditions. But during the ongoing eruption of the Kīlauea volcano, the camera has also been capturing the eruptions dramatic and eerie glow through clouds. Above is a 48-second time-lapse of the glow in the night between May 21st and 22nd.

Just when we thought there was no possible way someone could capture flowers in a fresh and unique way, we stumbled across the work of Craig Burrows. Burrows uses a technique called ultraviolet-induced visible fluorescence (UVIVF) to capture flower photos the likes of which we have never seen before.

The Northern Lights have been lighting up the sky over Iceland these past few days, and stunning photos of the auroras have been lighting up the Internet.

The Ijen group of volcanoes in East Java, Indonesia, features a popular tourist destination called the Blue Fire Crater. Molten sulfur and sulfuric gas emerge from cracks in the crater, causing large blue flames and streams of glowing blue "lava."

Chicago-based photographer Reuben Wu visited the volcano last month, capturing both its majesty from afar and its mesmerizing blue flows from up close.

Warsaw-based creative agency Ars Thanea recently created a photograph called "The Ash," which shows a bouquet of charred roses sitting amidst glowing embers. While the same photo could be created through Photoshop manipulation, the agency decided to go a more "real" route with the project.

Photographer Eric Paré has built much of his career around the concept of light painting, but a recent photo shoot he did involved a very different source of lighting: the bioluminescence of glowing plankton.

Romanian photographer Radu Zaciu has been experimenting recently with photographing fruits and vegetables using internal lighting. He places bulbs inside and uses that as the main light source for his series of glowing images. The project is called "The Light Inside."

Brazilian sports photographer Marcelo Maragni likes to do experimental photography in addition to his "ordinary" sports photography. Earlier this year, he decided that he wanted to try to capture action shots at night with ultraviolet flashes and colorful paint.

It's easy to plateau when you're experimenting with light painting photography, and as a result, this fun genre can often turn into a flash in the pan hobby.

And so, in order to help sustain your interest in what I think is a worthwhile endeavor and an under appreciated form of photography, I've decided to provide a few of the toys and tricks I've picked up in my experiences. These are things that have helped respire my interest in the past. Hopefully they'll motivate you to continue experimenting as well.

Daré alla Lucé is a project by photographer Amy Friend that features old photos that resemble constellations in the night sky. Friend creates the images by finding vintage photographs (online or in shops) and then poking tiny holes into them. My Modern Met writes,

The series began through her desire to see the photograph as an object. Friend wanted to find out what it meant for them to change, "to become something different than what they were originally intended to be" yet still remain the same. To her, the images represented "a life, a face, a moment, but only through a momentary glance." By altering them she hopes to playfully bring to light stories beneath the surface or what she refers to as "the unknown."

"It is the unknown that shines through the photographs. It is the unknown that releases the photographs and allows them to become something new."

Montreal-based photographer Benoit Paillé's Alternative Landscapes project features photos of various outdoor locations lit with a glowing square. The images aren't Photoshopped: Paillé actually suspends a 1x1 meter cube for the beautiful illumination seen in his images.

The Olympus OM-D EM-5 generated quite a bit of buzz when it was …

Social Lights is a project by photographer Seymour Templar that's like a nighttime version of Joe Holmes' Texting series that we featured earlier this year. Templar documented social life in NYC by snapping portraits of people interacting with others through their cell phones. Each individual unwittingly helps out by lighting their own faces with their phone displays.

Photographer Daniel Fox captured this beautiful (and spooky) photograph of dozens of pairs …