Did you wonder how they did this? It’s quite simple really. Just a lot of work and long nights. From the Lenz is a photography duo. They do several types of assignments. Allrounders with an urban style. Their backgrounds are quite different: Sean has a background in fine arts and landscapes; Kris’s background is more in portraits. One is American, the other European. They met in San Francisco. ‘Working by yourself is a pride thing in art’, they explain. Working as duo makes it better. They bounce ideas off each other, and the projects the require more effort, like Neon Luminance, require a team. The bottom line is the picture has to be great, whether you work alone or as a team.
Neon Luminance isn’t unique in it’s technique (see for example Janne Parviainen: playing with a rave toy), but they hadn’t seen the technique applied in this way before. It’s simply throwing glow sticks in a river, creek or waterfall, and capturing the image as the glow stick flows along the river, and then they catch it downstream. How much work can that be? Well, it actually sounds like fun, if you’re into hiking. You grab all the gear you need (think camera’s, lights, batteries and glow sticks), bring two of everything in case something doesn’t work. By now you’ve got two heavy bags each. Then hike up to twelve miles before night fall to get to the location you want to be at (generally isolated places). Then set everything up, have one person throw the sticks at the top of the stream or waterfall, have another catch them with a net at the bottom (they’re easy to catch: it’s dark and the sticks glow). One photo alone can take up to two hours to realize. So to get a few shots in, they have to make it an all nighter. A fun all-nighter, with cool results that’s giving them a lot of exposure!
You can see more of the Luminance series and other projects on their website www.fromthelenz.com/ or follow them on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FromTheLenz/.
