By Joana Couto

At Gravity Thinking we like to explore visual expressions, and we do it in a variety of ways. From VR and 3D film, to handmade typography and illustration, we fall in love with almost everything visually exciting that can be created.

Photography is a vast subject, practised by most artists. But there is a not so known technique that got my attention in the last couple of months: "Refractography".

After an inspired exhibition and a sexy conversation about lights, I decided I wanted to try to shoot some light reflections. So I did some quick research online and that’s when I bumped into this abstract form of photograph. With almost no post-processing or digital manipulation involved, this technique gives us infinite possibilities of exciting visuals. Beautiful light textures purely analogue and not computer generated.

All you need to have to start shooting is a dark room, a lens-less SLR, some refractive objects like a glass, and a bright light source (torch). When the light points at the glass (placed in front of the camera) it reflects and refracts the light into the camera. The object itself becomes the lens. 

The challenge starts here; you have to play around with light source distance and object positioning until you start seeing some amazing results. Without a lens it is also hard to get the subject focused, but with a bit of persistence you can create stunning visuals.

I am now moving from still image to film. Capturing moving light refractions is the next step.