Photo -Selene - a series of photographs exploring light - Includes - Luna Light Painting - Gathering falling light - © Lloyd Godman

Blanket Bay, Otway National Park, Victoria, Australia - Luna Light Gathering III - Lloyd Godman - August -2008

Out doors, light falls like star dust from the heavens upon us where it is either absorbed or reflected. It manifests a recognizable likeness that we identify as ourselves or another. As photographers, we might take a photograph of these light modulations in a traditional manner to represent a person or object.

Light from the same source also falls indiscriminately around us, but like waves that crash on an isolated beach, stray light disappears without acknowledgement or trace. In this series of images I use the camera as a means of gathering up this falling light to slowly grow an image inside the camera. In a similar manner to the environmental artist, Richard Long, the images reference a meditative walk, in my case, along a beach in moon-light or a bush track at dusk. However, where Long uses a camera to document his walks, I actually use the camera as part of the process of walking. (I first introduced this concept into my work in 1993) For the duration of the exposure while  walking, the camera is held at chest height, pointing forward with the shutter open for an extended period of time -  there is no way to view the scene -  only a sense of  what might be projected through the lens.  Many exposures of 30 second to several minutes are made during each walk, and in each the falling light is gathered through the lens of the camera. In the resulting images, a sense of time and vibration references the layers of light dust falling to earth.