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The Refraction Project started from a very simple thought, “I wonder if that would look cool?” but then built into something more. I thought to myself, “Is it possible to use a GoPro with a Macro lens attachment to shoot time lapses through a crystal ball?”, and after a few failures I found out, yes, it is indeed possible.
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When I first saw the effect of the time lapse, it was a mesmerising experience. It looked like a tiny globe, a world of its own, just sitting waiting to be explored. It felt like I could reach out and take it in the palm of my hand. The way these small worlds floated apart from the rest of the world around them reminded me of the Carl Sagan piece, “Pale Blue Dot,” and the line, “The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.” It made me want to go out and capture as many of these small worlds as I could, but I came up against some stage problems.
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One of the main challenges of shooting like this is that you can’t have the GoPro in a case, as you need to attach the Macro lens, which means weather conditions have to be just right. It couldn’t rain, but it also couldn’t be clear blue skies, as nothing would happen in the shots. So again, after another couple of failed attempts I started to get the hang of it. Another challenge was as soon as I took out a crystal ball in public, everyone wanted to know what I was doing with it, which meant a lot of shots were ruined by people and their dogs walking up to the camera. Most of them were friendly and just curious about what I was doing, so it didn’t matter too much.
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All in all the project took just over a year to film, not because it was necessarily difficult, but because our house fell apart around us, and so other things took centre stage in my mind, but I always wanted to come back to it. In the end I wanted to start off 2018 by finally getting this project finished, by giving it the polish it deserved. So here it is, “Refraction,” a collection of mini worlds just waiting to be explored.
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