Glowing Balls Of Light Created in Camera (no Photoshop!) by Denis Smith.

The Ball of Light is a photographic project by Southern Australian (Adelaide) photographer Denis Smith. Using a single long exposure and moving a light source around in the air to create the ball, Denis has taken traditional photography (no Photoshop or special processing is used) and added a new dimension with these beautiful creations.




Whether taken indoors or outdoors, daylight or nighttime, the glowing orbs of light are both mystical and hypnotic. Some of the following images have been cropped, to see the full sized images, check the links at the end of this post.
















In the photographers own words:
The Ball of Light floats in space transforming various locales into mystical portals bursting with otherworldly colours and energy. The contrast of the glowing spheres with the straight precise lines of the settings pulls in the viewer, triggering a sense of imagination and wonder. It's ethereal and still organic, and at the same time bold and almost blunt. The Ball of light fits into and augments it's settings without being overwhelming.

"There is so much post processing of photography today, I wanted to create something that was real, yet unreal. No pixels are added or subtracted from the Ball of Light images.



Living in South Australia has inspired me as a person and as a photographer. The constantly changing country side, the incredible landscapes and beautiful city give me no end of scope to work with. I dream of searching the planet for the Ball of Light. It has enlightened my life, perhaps it may bring joy to others."

Ball of Light website

See his Ball of Light flickr images here

You can order prints of these and more images here

Portraits Embossed on Aluminum Foil Pans By Idan Friedman

Designer and artist Idan Friedman of Israel's Reddish Studio has created a series of portraits embossed on aluminum foil pans. All the people featured in "Ordinary People and Disposable Objects" are part of his everyday life, ranging from close friends to passers-by.







As viewed when exhibited:



all images courtesy of the artist

Special thanks to Annals of America for bringing these to my attention

Reddish Studio

Clever and Creative C-Notes. Redesign the $100 Bill at Make Your Franklin.

above: the 100$ bill redesigned by Sean Fermoyle

Make Your Franklin is an online community art project devised by French designers Vincent Desdoigts, Martin Joubert and Etienne Lecorre, that allows anyone to design their own version of the United States 100$ bill. They are asking for you to recreate the money with a symbol of modern society.


above: my own lame contribution to the project, Luche Ben (mask courtesy of Mask Maniac)

All you have to do is download the template (a gigantic jpeg of the C-note) and start designing. Then you can upload your finished Benjamin to their online gallery. They simply ask that it be no larger than 7300 x 3000 pixels and no smaller than 1000 x 411 pixels.

Some people have gone all out and created viable and beautiful alternatives to the paper currency, while others (myself included) just had some fun defacing ol' Mr. Franklin with icons and imagery reflective of trendy and popular culture (e.g Disney, Mona Lisa, KISS, etc).



above: bills with popular iconography like Paul Stanley's KISS make-up and Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa, by Molle William and Loic Bel respectively, were amongst the designs submitted

The site has clearly been very popular given that their server was predominantly down yesterday because of traffic.

Here's a few of the bill redesigns from their online gallery, selected at the time this post was written. I'm sure many more terrific designs have since been submitted.

First, some seriously beautiful redesigns of the $100 bill:

Alexandre Manet Pikartzo:

Christelle Mozzati:

Julien Benayt:

Hugo Lecrux:

Arinin Evgeny:


And some funny money:

Two versions of Mickey Money by Didier Gerardin:


Paul Schuler gave it a complete Khadafi overhaul:
A Pink Floyd reference from Thomas Fontaine:

An homage to Darth Vader by Sylvain Weiss:

Agathe Teubner brings the American Eagle to life:

Some colorful currency from Martin Joubert:

Cedric Bariou asks Why So Serious? with his joker version:
Dekker Dryer's Monopoly Money:

Superhero C-note from Arlam:

Wasted Rita's take on a song we all know:

Vivien Cormier's illustrated version:

Fabio Maiorana cleverly gave Ben some time off:

and Cabanes' toxic money:

Bouton Bleue punks it up:

and a lovely minimal take on it from Burkhardthauke:



Give it a try or just view the gallery of submitted designs at Make your Franklin.