It's
been a long time since I was a teenager and I don't know how teenagers
decorate their bedrooms these days, but back in the 1960s we had a
pretty universal style: cover the walls with as many black-light
posters as you could afford and beg your parents to buy you a black
light for your birthday. Most of us just had little screw-in
incandescent black-light bulbs, but a few of my friends had huge
four-foot fluorescent fixtures and they enjoyed a very elite social
status because of it. Recently black lights have been enjoying a
rebirth in popularity and I couldn't be happier--if only I'd kept all of
those cool posters!
Black lights work by filtering most visible light and emitting only
long-wave Ultraviolet light. Things that glow under black light are
called black light reactive and there are a lot of natural things that
react brilliantly, including: certain minerals (fluorite, calcite,
wernerite and many more), petroleum jelly, quinine (tonic water), Mr.
Clean and even live scorpions. (Yes, if you lose a life scorpion in
your house a black light is the way to find it.)
You can also buy things that are known to react--including paints,
balloons, soap bubbles and jewelry (to list just a few), as well as
lipstick and body paint in case you want to do some very haunting
portraits. Places like Spencer gifts (in almost every mall) and online
sites like www.blacklight.com sells tons of fun things to photograph. Look
around hardware and toy stores for likely subjects too--anything that is
labeled "fluorescent" (spray paints, highlighters, sticky notes, etc.)
is likely to glow.
The real fun of playing with black light, however, is just
experimenting with common objects because until you place it them in
front of a black light, you never know what will react. While doing
test shots for the photos here, for example, I was shooting on my
kitchen counter and I noticed a label on a bottle of olive oil on the
counter was glowing to beat the band.
To take photos under black light all that you'll need are an
inexpensive black light fixture, some objects that react to black light
and (preferably) a tripod since exposures tend to be very long. I
bought both an 18" model Blacklight Fixture with Bulb- 18" and this 24"version American DJ Black 24 BLB 2 FT Blacklight and Fixture
and both work great. (If you're thinking of buying one, please use
these links or the ads to the right and you'll help support this site!) Making the exposures is
just a matter of shutting off all room lights and placing your subjects
close enough to the light so that they glow intensely. Surprisingly,
most digital cameras meter black light quite well (remove the UV filter
over your lens) and my exposures were generally around 1/8 second at
ISO 200 with the lens was wide open. Without a tripod you could boost
up the ISO and probably shoot handheld.
Incidentally, you can shoot entire rooms this way (especially if you
line the walls with posters), but you'll probably get the most
brilliant results from shooting close-ups of very reactive objects. The
tulips, butterflies and dragonflies here, for example, were just
unfinished wooden objects that I found in the local crafts store and
then painted with a combination of both spray and brush-on black light
reactive paints. Martha Stewart did a great article on black light
photography in her
2009 Halloween issue and there are some cool room shots, so look it up
next time you're at the library--it's a good thing (the issue and the
library, by the way).
Black-light photography is very experimental and tremendous fun--and,
if you are a teenager, just think how excited and proud your parents will be when you ask them
if they have any old Jimi Hendrix posters stashed away in the attic.
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