“How long will this last, this delicious feeling of being alive, of having penetrated the veil which hides beauty and the wonders of celestial vistas?

It doesn’t matter, as there can be nothing but gratitude for even a glimpse of what exists for those who can become open to it.” ― Alexander Shulgin, Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story

Psilocybin Dreaming

Claudia shared with me a painting she discovered, and we both immediately knew we had to create a shoot inspired by it. Months in the making; It took building UV strobes, testing UV paint. Then we had to find the perfect mushroom hat, and have it custom built.

The flow, timing, and posing required for light painting with slow shutter, rear curtain sync is top tier. Claudia had to plan where the LED whip would start, finish and then be frozen in a pose when the rear curtain fired. Absolutely outstanding work by this extraordinary woman.

Most are shot with 3.2 sec shutter. Though we did take this to the extreme end at 10 secs with good results.

The UV paint took about 3 hours. Flower wardrobe attached with fishing line. Claudia arrived about 7pm, and we shot till 5am. This topped ‘The Hallucinogenic Toreador‘ for longest single look shoot by a couple hours.

The Perfect Mushroom Hat

Searching through Etsy I found the one of the nicest vendors who did an amazing job building and carefully shipping Claudia’s dream mushroom hat. Checkout her Etsy store, and follow her on Instagram.

The LED Whip

Amazon	Purchased on Amazon this whip has three modes: static mode, fade mode and jumping mode. We utilized the static mode, while also changing the color of the whip mid flow. The jumping mode also allowed us to get multiple colors quickly within the time the rear curtain closed, and the strobe fired.

Building the UV Strobes

Our UV strobe needs to block all visible light, and only allow ultra-violet light to pass with out any of the blue and purple visible light leaking through that you usually see with “black lights”, UV flashlights.

Solution UV Pass Filters. These filters are used by typically used for astro-photography, and can be very expensive. Some extensive searching online I found some UV Pass filter glass on aliexpress.

UV Pass Filters on AliExpress:

⚠️ Be VERY CAREFUL not to touch the bare bulbs. The oils on your fingers will likely ruin the bulb, and possibly explode when fired at full power.

The first filter is excellent to use on your typical flash that you have laying around. You will need to remove the fresnel lens, and any other filters on the front of the flash so that the bare bulb is exposed.

The second filter sized M82 just so happens to fit the front of Godox AD300 Pro‘s reflector. I attached the filter to the reflector with gaff tape. Remove the glass cover of the bare bulb on the AD300 Pro.