08-20-08 – Silhouettes

Also, many different colors of signal flare are available from marine supply houses – the white handheld flare is typically used for collision avoidance signaling.

I’ll have to look into that. Thanks. You know any names of marine supply houses?

Wow! Just looked at some more of your “flare photos” on The Gallery. I have a woods with the same feel to it behind my house and would like to try doing something similar. Are the flares really safe in a dry wood environment? Your photos are spectacular.

no, they wouldn’t be safe at all in a dry forest environment. I’m in a rain forest. I use a galvanized steel bucket with sand in the bottom to hold the flares to keep from scarring the moss, and I carry a fire extinguisher with me. If the area I’m in is rocky, I don’t necessarily bother with the bucket.

Seriously, don’t go burning down any forests. But the flares are fairly contained, for all the light they put out. I’ve never had one go out of control.

I looked at Western Auto for handheld flares, but all I could find were ones that were for flare guns, not handheld. I’ll look further.

Corsec67 and soosh I’m always careful about fire. We have too much to lose! That’s why I asked. We do have a creek that runs through the woods, do you think it would work set up in the middle of it? How high does the flame go? And from what soosh said, it doesn’t sound like there are sparks that come off or am I wrong? Maybe I should just get a big beam flashlight and put colored filters over it. I really like the effect of color in a dark woods.

It’d be interesting to see what a 1,000 candlepower or so torch would look like filtered. Maybe you could build something like a lightbox and put the light inside it pointing up… Just with anything that big you don’t want to actually put a filter on the light itself because something is gonna melt – filter definitely & flashlight probably.

As for half-naked… 😉 My husband and I thought his pix would do better, particularly the color one that’s inline (and has about half as many votes as the B&W.) I thought the colors were awesome in that picture, but apparently the majority wasn’t impressed. Maybe it’s that “cheapshot” angle, but he was really going for art, I thought. Or I should say that I agree with the “art” of them or I wouldn’t have let him submit them. *shrug*

LOL. If I was going for ‘cheap shots’ I wouldn’t have spent 20 minutes gettig the hair light exactly at the angle and intensity I was looking for 😛

It shouldn’t.

Many filters are made specifically for theatrical lighting – lights that get so hot you can’t move them while they’re on without welder’s gloves and an apron.

Good point. I was thinking more along the lines of home-brew lighting – a hi-power torch and some colored plexiglass (or similar) on a PVC frame. The missus built a light box that I think I could modify for the purpose…

I just had a brilliant idea for soosh, if you’ll pardon the pun.

One of these should put out just a little less light than a white flare – and is reusable.

I was thinking along the lines of this but yeah…

where are you gonna get potassium nitrate? I haven’t found it anywhere in a long time

Whatever happened to a good old bucket of saltpeter and charcoal?

Isn’t that just gunpowder? Last thing I need is ATF after my ass.

That carbide lamp is a good idea. going to have to look into that.