Behind the scenes shooting stop-motion light-painted dancers in 360-degree angles (video)

In our time covering photography news, we've seen plenty of 360-degree "bullet time" images; stop motion films; and light-painted photos. But it takes something special to combine all three, and to do it with human subjects, too. That's exactly what Eric Paré has done with LightSpin. Created with the TimeCode Lab, this short video represents the combination of a frankly obscene number of photographs and a large amount of hard work.

Paré put out a short documentary about what it took to create the video, and what's astonishing is how much of it was done by hand. The dancers at the center of the action were flanked by a rig of 24 cameras, all covered in black cloth except for their lenses poking through. For each one-second exposure, the dancer would hold a pose, and then they were hand lit by a black-clad person waving a strobing torch. Then there were two seconds to reposition, and then the next frame. All told, more than 500,000 shots were taken to create the video.

You can see some of the still images from LightSpin here, and animated versions here.

Part of what makes this so impressive is that it was done with live subjects. Usually stop motion is done with inanimate objects, as they tend to be happier with staying stock still for long periods of time. But Paré's use of dancers controlling their own motion in tiny increments is astonishing.

(via DIYPhotography)

LightSpin = Bullet-time + Stop-motion + Light-painting from Timecode Lab on Vimeo.

LightSpin Documentary Film from Eric Paré on Vimeo.