Emily, Will You Marry Me?


Derick Childress spent more than three nights at the Clarion Hotel in Raleigh, North Carolina, to prepare a wedding proposal for his girlfriend Emily. The project he finally came up with must have been a succes, and we therefore hope to congratulate Derick. He made his drawing using light writing technique. A light source is moved (in this case, a 3 million candlepower spotlight) while the shutter of a DSLR camera is left open, creating a streak of light in the final exposure. A couple of months ago Jeroen proclaimed light to be the new graffiti. Here we add another chapter to that story. Here, light takes a position in love-related messages in public space, which before were exclusively meant to be written at viaducts, toilet doors and trees. The special thing here is the scale of the performed artwork. A light writing on this scale has never been done before, which made this job very complicated.


Childress about his preparations:

“I used Google Earth to check out the views from several large buildings in downtown Raleigh, N.C.  Since none of the letters could fall on areas that were inaccessible by foot, the requirements for the vantage point were very specific.  I finally found the perfect spot – the top of the Clarion hotel.  Luckily, the Clarion has a restaurant that is open to the public on the top floor. I went up one afternoon and snapped some pics for reference.”

Read the whole story here.

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