John Poppleton is a photographic artist in Utah. One night in 2010, he lay awake in a hotel bed in Denver, unable to sleep. It was then that a great idea hit him: use black light to create images. That itself is not a new idea, but Poppleton found an original use for black light. He uses fluorescent paint to create scenes of the night sky on the bodies of women. Then he photographs them under black light. The results are, as you can see, incredibly beautiful. You can see more works in the series here. Content warning: artistic nudity.
Here’s a time-lapse video showing Poppleton painting and shooting a model. What does black light offer photographers? In a video, Poppleton explains:
I like to think of it as the fourth dimension of photographic lighting. Here you have an invisible light source that is turning your subject into the actual light source that’s recording the image given that they’re wearing or covered in a UV reactive material, of course. It’s like trying to photograph a light bulb that’s lit and having the control of highlight and shadow on that light bulb by moving the energy source.
You can read more about Poppleton’s work in Rangefinder magazine.
-via My Modern Met