What our safe shapes teach us EP262

"Aren't you tired of doing the same thing over and over?"

This is a question someone asked us after we shared the results of our third light-painting session with the tubes... in 2015!

Hundreds of sessions and thousands of images later, the short answer is no. We're not tired or bored of doing outdoor light painting. But we're not interested in creating on "autopilot" either. In this video, we look back at past explorations and challenge ourselves to go out without doing any of our "safe shapes": no familiar light-painting shapes for Eric, no comfortable poses for me.

We deeply believe repetition and consistency are required to develop any kind of mastery, which is one of our goals with our art. But practice and small iterations also allow us to carve a path that partly defines itself and becomes our own over time.

We're not afraid of repeating ourselves. As long as we are still stimulated by the process, by the big and small challenges and discoveries that come with it. As long as we get a sense that there is some evolution in our path, we're good. Sometimes the steps we take feel big; sometimes they are barely noticeable.

Looking back, we realized that there are light-painting shapes and poses we used years ago that we don't do anymore, and others we often come back to. And this is totally normal. We wanted to get a bit uncomfortable and revisit some older things we both used to do, just to shake things up a bit. Below are a few examples of older shapes and poses we wanted to be inspired by.

As it's often the case, this experiment didn't turn out as we thought it would, and that's fine. We didn't create anything we were happy with using a single tube. But that dissatisfaction led Eric to explore using two tubes, which was still new to us at the time. And this ended up being the beginning of something else. It led us to create double-tube images for many months afterward.

This session brought us back to a question we keep asking ourselves: when should we keep working on an idea, and when should we try a different approach? There's a balance to be found between deliberately persisting with an idea when you feel stuck or bored and setting it aside to explore a completely different route. Sometimes a breakthrough comes when we persist, and other times some distance from what is familiar, along with new input, is the answer. Both can be the right approach depending on what the process needs. It's sometimes hard to know the difference. But what is important to us is to stay curious and avoid getting too comfortable in our approach.

A note on our safe shapes

For Eric, it's mostly the circle, the door, and the deep flower. There are many reasons why these became our favorites over time, and we love them. They can be repeated consistently, created in most locations, and used to hide the light painter's body. Most importantly, they increase our chances of getting a sharp subject. Making simple shapes that can be completed in a single pass is the most effective tool the light painter has to reduce the risk of blur. We'll have to talk more about that topic soon. Beyond these technical advantages, these shapes are aesthetically simple, which means they usually blend harmoniously with the landscape.

For me, it's a similar process. My poses are much simpler than they used to be. I take fewer "risks" than I did 10 years ago for technical reasons, but I'm also interested in making the body feel as much a part of the scene as possible, blending with the light painting and the environment. To me, that often means less is more. But that preference is highly personal. Here are a few variations we identify as my "go-to" poses when we shoot. They often involve keeping my body engaged but relaxed, my arms close to my body, and my gaze slightly downward. These elements really help with stability.

Looking back at what we created during this exercise, we know we only scratched the surface. It was a first step, and we're convinced we could take it much further. It seems obvious we'll have to try it again soon.

Kim & Eric