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“I’ve panned the camera laterally so I get Rothko-like streaks,” he says. To prep for the Audi shoot, he first made some abstract images by dragging his shutter. As the Pixelstick is moved laterally, it works like a printer head, “drawing” the uploaded image. “The Pixelstick allows you to upload images that you’ve made” to control the pattern of light the tool emits, he says. Wu wanted to use the light to color areas of the car and the scene in magenta and turquoise hues.
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He also notes, “I discovered there was a nice light sculpting effect on the body of the car as well.” That’s a crucial part of my workflow.”ĭuring his tests, for example, he found that moving the Pixelstick smoothly to create straight streaks of light would take practice and a lot of effort. “As you test, you find cool things about what the effect might be and how it works with the surface of the car. Experimenting helps him prepare for shoots, and also instill confidence in the creatives. “I did some testing at home with my own car,” he says. Wu would be doing about 20 shots in the course of a night, and he had a day to location scout. “Creatives regularly ask me to do a version of my personal work for commercial jobs,” says Wu, who has used long exposures in his fine-art landscape work. So one of my inputs to this idea was to move in straight lines or very gentle, simple curves in a way which would allow the car to be the hero.” He envisioned using the lighting device to create the illusion of motion blur or something resembling a science-fiction depiction of moving at hyperspeed. “I found it a bit chaotic and it didn’t seem to the element of speed. The deck the creatives sent him included reference photos in which the stick was moved around arbitrarily. The Pixelstick “is used a lot by light painting photographers, using long exposures and moving the stick around to create patterns,” Wu explains. Instead, they suggested lighting the car with a Pixelstick, a long, thin matrix of LED lights that are powered by battery. They didn’t have the budget to do rig shots or car-to-car photography. “They wanted to put across the element of speed without moving the car,” Wu explains. This time, they wanted to show the car in an urban environment, and chose to shoot on Treasure Island in San Francisco. More recently, the creatives asked him to shoot several images of the Audi A5 coupe for social media. Thanks to his light effects, Wu captured streaks of light in the night sky and gave the desert location an other-worldly glow. Wu had previously worked with agency Muhtayzik Hoffer on award-winning ads for Audi USA that showed desert locations in Utah at night. And, he adds, “I enjoy being able to adapt the way I create my own art to project, and also collaborating with the art directors and creative directors themselves.” Can you do this for our product?’” Adapting techniques to photographing different subjects and different environments enhances his personal work, he says. When the ads he shoots are successful, “a lot of people take notice and then another company will say, ‘We liked this. “Creatives regularly ask me to do a version of my personal work for commercial jobs,” Wu says. His images have caught the attention of advertising clients who also want to show their products in a new light. “It’s about presenting familiar things in a new light.” By illuminating a desert canyon or capturing a halo of light drawn above the peak of a mountain, he invites viewers to look harder at landscapes they may have seen in numerous photos.
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“I use a technology to create the work, but I’m interested in using it in a way that it was never designed to be used,” he notes. In his “Lux Noctis” series, he used drone lights to illuminate canyons and buttes at night.
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In his personal series “Aeroglyphs,” he has used long exposures to capture the patterns made by lights he’s attached to a drone and sent flying in a formation over a stretch of calm ocean. Photographer and filmmaker Reuben Wu is in the enviable position of landing commercial assignments that are inspired by his personal work. Creatives: Joel Kaplan, executive creative director Justin Hargraves, art director Reilly Schlitt, copywriter