Denis if You Know Me You Know I Love Art
Denis Smith was struggling in life and had nearly hit rock lesser. His chore was very demanding and draining him and his wife. He was drinking heavily, struggling financially, and depressed. So he discovered a creative outlet that would change his life – photography and calorie-free painting. That was 2 years ago.
Today, Denis is turning that artistic outlet into more than just a hobby. A truthful inspiration for anyone struggling in life. Watch his story beneath and see a gallery of his images below.
Ball of Calorie-free Video Documentary
Sam Collins did a wonderful documentary on Denis Smith. He talks nigh life earlier and after discovering his creative outlet, how he creates his assurance of lite and more than. It's a great and inspiring story to watch:
Brawl of Light Photo Gallery
Ball of Light Video Transcript
It all takes place at night. It's the but time I ever see the ball of light. I can't tell you exactly how I observe them. I'm still non exactly sure what they mean. But what I practice know is that taking these photographs has changed my life.
I'grand from Auckland, which is where I was born. I spent several years over at that place moving from ane high-pressure sales task to some other…chasing the wrong things…chasing coin…trying to back up a lifestyle that I didn't really want or need, but found myself having to exist and killing myself working trying to sustain that lifestyle.
New Zealand was actually hammered a couple years ago past the economic crunch and when you're in the high-pressure sales environment that I was in it just clobbered me like sledge hammer. The signs that I should have seen that things were incorrect are things like I'd never pay cash for a car. I e'er (??) up cars…and airheaded cars for silly money. The amount of drinking I was doing…obscene amounts of alcohol…not just physically consuming, but financially. I was smoking cigars.
My daily routine would be getting upward, two or three cherry bulls, a couple of cigars, off to piece of work, a couple more than red bulls, smoking cigars all day, if nosotros had lunch some beer or wine, I hateful pretty much every day into the beers afterward piece of work, become habitation more, knock myself out. Yous know, never bothering near what any of it was costing me because I was just terrified to look. Somehow, I just thought it was going to keep coming.
It was this accumulating affair where you lot had to stay motivated and pumped and heavy. Merely what was happening was I was driving to work…feeling…really nervous…and that sor of involved into just this overwhelming sense of fear and depression. I hateful I was just falling autonomously. I was keeping myself together with alcohol and coffee…only trying to numb it really.
I met Kyrie, my married woman, at Xerox. We actually worked together at that place for some time. Every bit things were spiraling out of command for me, she was very strong and supportive simply it got to a signal where she just couldn't practice it anymore and I was very shut to losing my married woman and my best friend. It got to a point where I needed to fix what was incorrect or I'd lose my wife…and information technology was just terrifying for me. Kyrie'due south from Southward Commonwealth of australia and we'd been coming to South Australia for some time and so nosotros fabricated the decision to come, pack up, sell everything and motion over hither…that was…what an enlightening time in my life.
It was interesting because it gave me that niggling window of time to choice upwards a hobby. As part of that whole change and move, that's when I pickedup a camera for the first fourth dimension. I finally, for the commencement time in my life, found myself with some fourth dimension and decided to fill that space with a hobby and that's where the photography came from.
It gave me the opportunity to spend fourth dimension alone and that was mainly washed with simply walking. I would only pick up a camera, put a pair of shoes on, grab a bottle of water and walk…I'd walk for hours. At dwelling house in New Zealand everything was the same…information technology was just always the same. It was ever green…it was kind of raining or raining. Ane of the things I learned really quickly about here in South Australia is that in that location's this radically irresolute evolving environment around me and it was moving from i season to the other and it wasn't only a subtle alter just nosotros had the colors changed, the temperature changed, everything changed so dramatically it fascinated me because I'd never seen it. I'd only ever lived in one city and in the center of that urban center.
What a place…you bulldoze an hour from thick cute dark-green vines to the oldest rocky rock in the world in the Flinders Ranges. I started to realize that not only was it changing in itself and on its own merely the whole place was unlike and then varied. Then that got me even more excited nearly information technology. I wanted to see that.
Things were kicking along and I was taking a lot of photos of the Barossa Valley vines and trees and stones and stuff, but I realized actually fast that that'due south the aforementioned thing anybody else was doing. I was putting my photos online and joining these groups of the Barossa Valley and in that location were photos exactly like mine everywhere. And so, I realized pretty quickly that I wanted to try and find something a petty more radical.
I went online and spent a bit of time hanging around online looking at different types of photography and pretty quickly discovered a low-cal painting. And it was something I'd seen a little bit of, simply it just seemed actually edgy and it was a pretty tight little customs online. And amongst the mass of photography it was actually bonny to me.
Then with normal photography, the shutter opens and closes a photograph and you get a snapshot of what's there in front of the camera. With calorie-free painting what you do is the shutter stays open for a long period of time and then when it's a dark environment it brings more low-cal in and if you move a light around in front of the camera it stays embedded in the moving picture, like a sparkler when you write your name as a kid. With a sparkler, it's exactly the same process. Merely it is slightly more technical than normal photography, just the long exposure part of information technology.
I started looking up some lights and ways of moving information technology around and getting some really slap-up sort of rainbow effects and pieces, but like the other photography it rapidly got a bit slow for me so I started learning a little bit nigh electronics and how to brand the lights brighter and dimmer and just experimenting with moving these lights effectually and ended upwards merely waving it effectually 1 night and all of a suddent information technology merely turned into a circle. And it kinda went from at that place.
I started getting a rhythm and a bicycle virtually it and it was just a footling more than organized and it started looking really dainty on the screen, just irresolute it from existence random to an ordered circle.
Then I'll never forget the one night that circle turned into a sphere. I however got that photo and I wait at it oft. That's when the brawl of calorie-free was born really.
So, what I'm doing is I'm swinging the low-cal source in a circle merely I'm turning around and then information technology turns the circle into a sphere which is quite a simple thing only ofttimes people say, "well how come up I can't see you in the picture?" Well, if you lot think about this – when you see a photo of a car going down the state highway you tin run across the white and the rear lights it's quite a common thing, but y'all can't meet the car. It'south exactly the same thing. I'm moving constantly effectually in the prototype which takes a lot of practice whilst spinning the light effectually so that'southward how I'k not seen in the image at all, and yet you nonetheless encounter the sphere. It takes a lot of practice, information technology'southward not an easy affair. And there are sometimes when you do see me.
The most critical thing when I'm organizing a shoot for the ball of calorie-free is but preparing for the effect. In the week or ii leading up to it I've got to exist checking things similar is information technology near the water tide, I need to check if the conditions's going to be okay because I need a full moon really to get enough light, so that's no good if at that place's clouds. So, preparing all of those things leading up to it is critical considering they all have to come together in 1 short period of time.
The moon is absolutely spot on. It couldn't be on a meliorate angle for where we are…just with the walls, in that location will be a flake of shadow, and it's really nice. The location's perfect here to have a cleft at the world record for the number of balls of lite that stands at five. So, we're gonna have a crack at six. I call up we can practise it.
Start the clock…and they've done it. The earth tape is broken and the crowd goes wild. I, two, three, four, five nigh perfect balls of low-cal. We got a couple of (??) ones in here simply that's alright, they're usable. That's fantastic. Information technology'south incredible. Admittedly mind-boggling. My work is washed hither.
I never plan about what colour is going to happen there. Often it's about how I'm feeling, what the night'south like, if it's common cold or if information technology'due south hot. I never know until I get there what the actual colors are like then each location gets a unique ball of light. It's almost like a fingerprint. Sometimes it will exist a actually sharp, bright brawl of light. Or sometimes, particularly when I'm on the beach it will be a soft ball of light.
I never know what it'southward going to be like. Often it feels similar solidication that determines how the ball of light's going to be, only they're always different.
Information technology's something not a lot of people run across or accept seen. It's astonishing how people, and even myself sometimes, I look at them and they take this real sense of surrealness about them and uniqueness about them. I frequently feel like they're a portal into another place or time or I often experience like they're a portal for some other entity or other thing coming into our world.
There's often a story or 2 that goes with some of the images nearly that. And other people accept said that to me likewise. They expect at them and remember wow, it looks similar a portal into another world or some other time.
Our kids just love information technology. When I have prints out at shows or whatever, the children come up upwards and they take hold of them…it's amazing. They never look at them in confusion. They ever look at them in wonder and make stories almost them. That fascinates me.
There's something most spheres…we're constantly surrounded past them – the planet, the dominicus. Spheres seem to bring out a sense of strenght and ability. Nosotros're surrounded by them everywhere and so much of what nosotros have around us and we create equally humans are very ridgid and foursquare and so that's why I love the sphere.
If you'd said to me 2 years ago that I'd exist in a state of affairs now creating what some people describe every bit art and someone would want to have it and pay for it, I would have laughed at yous two years ago. And now it gives me more joy than anything I've e'er felt.
All the money I've made and jobs I hated have been substituted by something that gives me then much warmth…and other people besides. And that's changed my life.
Ane of the things I recall most all the time is going overseas and looking maybe to come across if there's a ball of light somewhere else. There have to be heady places to go and search for them. I think often most Egypt and I recall about exciting places like People's republic of china and other great countries and searching and finding assurance of light there. South Australia can't be the just identify where in that location's a brawl of low-cal. They have to be somewhere else.
Source: http://www.arttherapyblog.com/artwork/photography-and-light-painting-inspire-denis-smith-to-create-balls-of-light/
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