Arts Design

BEAUTIFULLY DARK PHOTOS HAPPENING NOW

Photo from We Are All Made of Stars series by Daria Khoroshavina.

by Daria Khoroshavina. Photo from We Are All Made of Stars series.

Today, we are featuring the works of 3 extraordinary photographers, each of whom is a master of the Beautiful Dark.

DARIA KHOROSHAVINA

Russian photographer Daria Khoroshavina brings new life and art to black light photography, a technique that originally became popular during the 1960’s.

Black light photography involves shooting subjects under ultraviolet lights, excluding most if not all, visible light. Colored gels are used to add drama to the visible light. This all results in striking blasts of color and contrast.

Khoroshavina’s models wear fantastic fluorescent body paint and glitter, which make them look like they are made of stardust under the black light.

“In the chase of small silent moments of living I fell in love with photography,” Khoroshavina says. “I want my style to be subtle and metaphoric, a mesh from the simplest preciousness of human body and infinite universe of mind.”

Khoroshavina works as a portrait & fashion photographer in Moscow.

Her photographs have been selected to be part of the Adobe Creative Cloud Mosaic collaborative project and were featured at the AdobeMax creative conference this past October 2014.

MIKKO LAGERSTEDT

Self-taught Finnish photographer Mikko Lagerstedt loves to take his camera out at night. While he focuses on the simplicity of Finnish landscapes, his beautifully dark photos are rich in color and atmosphere.

Lagerstedt’s latest series, “Into the Mist” and “Night Animals,” are both stunning.

Nights can be exceedingly long or exceedingly short in Finland, as it sits up high on the globe, near the north pole. Lagerstedt finds shooting at night matches his own personal aesthetics. He adds his artistry by playing up the atmospheric elements, such as fog and mist.

Timing and weather are crucial part night shoots, particularly when capturing images of stars.

Clouds, the phase of the moon, temperature, and humidity, all affect the picture. And Lagerstedt captures it all in a way that most people wouldn’t normally see.

His photos are visually and emotionally interesting. “My goal is to capture the feeling I had when I took the photograph,” he says.

“I have just recently realized, that one of the reasons I create atmospheric photographs, comes from my past - losing my best friend when I turned 20, has definitely influenced my work and how I see things surrounding us,” Lagerstedt explains.

Lagerstedt is currently exhibiting a series of images entitled Atmosphere at The International Cultural Centre Caisa, Helsinki until December, 18.

"Utterly captivating, the images are full of imagination that endeavors to relay a sense of magic after dark."

– Meghan Young, Trend Hunter

TAKEHITO MIYATAKE

Photographer Takehito Miyatake’s photos are taken in darkness, with a spare painterly use of light to define his subjects. Miyatake is influenced by waka, a classical form of Japanese poetry, which connects the human heart and spirit to the forces of nature.

Miyatake’s night time shots are taken with a range of exposure times, ranging from 15 seconds for the Sakurajima Volcano explosion to 30 minutes for his firefly photo.

A graduate of Tokyo Polytechnic University, Miyatake majored vision optics. He was inspired by landscape photographer Yoshikazu Shirakawa and began to photograph his own beautiful landscapes.

Miyatake works primarily with large format cameras and digital video.

Read more about Beautiful Darkness, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink,Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including 10 New Books Celebrate Beautiful Darkness Now, 10 Beautifully Dark Blooms to Love Now and Black Food Is Beautiful Now.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Darkness in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 12.14.2014. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!