Dreams of Aliens Among Us: Selections from Vibrant Night: Light Painting Landscapes

Note: This is a set of selections from my ongoing body-of-work/series, "Vibrant Night: Light Painting Landscapes" which focuses on the American Southwest, particularly Texas. (In the spirit of the great Richard Misrach and his Desert Cantos, I consider "Vibrant Night" to be a lifelong project that includes "subseries" of specific terrains and even more specific "studies" within them.) I also re-purpose some of the photos, as I do here, to tell visual stories, as I do here, OR to lead the viewer on trips ( "a strange, long night’s journey into the day") which explores the variable moods Mother Nature evokes.) My main goal is aesthetic as I explore the perspective that light painting can provide. Usually, I wander the night side of nature looking for views strange and beautiful.] This current project leads the viewer deeper into the wilderness night to tell a strange, dream-like fantasy. It was inspired by two studies (within two subseries of Vibrant Night) -- which I am soon to post as projects on my LensCulture network/portfolio site (www.LensCulture.com/ron-levy) . One study (Pareidolia: Alien-Looking Trees Study) explores the illusion of how some objects (trees in this case) lend themselves to be imagined as things that really aren't there: That's what "pareidolia" means, and we are all familiar with it when, for example, we see figures and faces in clouds. The other study is a set of light paintings taken in gravel pits (Gravel Pit Study), most with a starry background. Being struck that it gave many viewers the impression of being on another planet, I came up with a fantasy that combined the two, along with a lead-in from other light painting shots. Unlike my other visual narratives to date from the encompassing Vibrant Night body-of-work posted on my LensCulture site (i.e., two versions of "Hobo Photo..." one with dialogue, one without much), this story is more analogous to a tone poem or mood piece. I think it is one of those things where it's best not to explain too much. Yet, drawing from my screenwriting background, it does have a structure: the opening shots take us from the edges of civilization into an increasingly strange, mysterious wilderness as a middle section where we meet the "alien" trees. (I often like to start with bridges as the gateways from the normal world, but here, from the very first shot, "Bridge Dreams," it is clear the genre is fantasy. Parenthetically, one might consider who is the dreamer -- me or the bridge... or me dreaming a bridge can dream!) The end has the most heart for me, as I see it as these "aliens" longing for their home in the stars, with the "snail" crawling out on a billion year journey to its original home in the stars. It's that kind of thing. Or whatever you make of it. Pareidolia is surreal by it's nature. Ending on a rational note, there is a scientifically credible hypothesis that life may have been seeded on Earth from other planets (the panspermia hypothesis.) So, we might all be aliens on Mother Nature's planet. ---- The following is the statement from my encompassing body-of-work, "Vibrant Night:..." It is a supplement in case you are interested in my general objectives and techniques. (Of course, you can find it as a project on my LensCulture site, which I find gives me better exposure for my portfolios than a personal site: simply googling "Ron S Levy" with spaces brings up my LensCulture site at the top of Google -- no mean feat, since there are, um, a lot of Ron Levy sites on the web! So, I'm very appreciative of LensCulture and the exposure it offers for new artists. There's no need to read the following, if you don't need more on the context of my work: "VIBRANT NIGHT" STATEMENT Although I have been doing daytime landscape photography for decades, my primary focus in the last several years has been the type of long exposure light painting depicted in my body-of-work, The Vibrant Night.... In this series, I strive to unleash the potential colors of night in ways and places not commonly seen. Most night landscape photography, if not black and white, uncloaks the dark in muted colors. But I try to show it not merely for what it is, but for what it could be: I aim to unmask the hidden potential for an otherworldly beauty by using applied light. A bit hyperreal, but not too far removed from what was there. To do this, I have developed my own style of light painting photography involving lights of different color temperatures or passed through filters to coax tonality and saturation from different areas of the subject so it harmonizes with existing natural or artificial lights. To bring out its full potential, I do extensive post-processing. My aim is to create a subtle visual fantasia – one both familiar and strangely beautiful, if not beautifully apocalyptic(!), at once. I take joy in the transformative nature of this approach, with its potential to reveal latent colors and tones, to unveil what lies hidden beneath the surface. It enables me to bring a different point of view to a beautiful place. Or, even to find beauty in what otherwise might pass as ordinary. These are my goals. So come with me on a strange, long night’s journey into the day. There, I try to capture the variable moods of Mother Nature, including those where her powerful vibrancy metaphorically depicts (to me) that she is a mysterious but strong Gaian force not to be fooled with. Yes, we can change her, however she won’t miss us a bit if – in our hubris – we cause changes that lead to our demise. As Sara Teasdale’s famous poem, “There Will Come Soft Rains,” puts it: Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.