Kris Foot is the top light painter on our planetary orb.
On Tuesday afternoon, he got the call that he was the champion of the Spun-Ups Global Orbs tournament on Instagram, a competition entered by photographers all over the world who specialize in long-exposure light manipulation images.
"I found out five minutes ago. They announced it as a post on their page, then the leader messaged me also. I'm a happy guy," said Foot, who advanced through several playoff rounds to arrive this week at the finals.
He squared off against Kevin Cripps who goes by the Instagram name Adaptive_Kromatics. Each submitted their pice de rsistance on Monday, then had to wait for the panel of international judges to render their verdict.
"It was a Canadian face-off. Kevin is from Alberta, so that was surprising," said Foot, who then laughed in disbelief.
"I've never been the champion of anything; now suddenly I'm a world champion."
The championship image was a shot of the historic Salmon Valley church taken on Sunday night just before midnight. The focal point of the shot is a human silhouette in what appears to be a blast of fire, flanked by four orbs, each a different colour, each with a corresponding string of colour leading to a white semi-sphere seemingly growing from the ground in front of it all. Trees and stars completed the conception.
Each orb had to be separately "drawn" using light, and the fire illustration had to be painted onto the night air also using light.
"I went all-out. I was definitely stressing out over location because the guy I was going against had epic locations every time, and he was starting to incorporate astro-photography too (Milky Way backdrops), so I knew I had to bring my absolute best best shot," said Foot.
"I thought about Hixon Falls, but then I used Questions & Answers Of Prince George (a Facebook page) to get some suggestions, and I didn't get a big response for that, so I decided to go right back to my roots. I went to the Salmon Valley church because it's where I spun my very first orb, it's where I first started light painting."
The fire effect was created by opening the camera's aperture and holding it open while Foot whipped the air with a device "like a horse tail made up of fiberoptic hairs, each one illuminated with coloured light, it's called a bit whip."
For the orbs, he had to be close to perfect as he spun each one by hand, light streaks that had to be carefully controlled to ensure each was the same size and shape.
"I didn't use any of my axis mechanical tools. It was a light taped to the end of a rope, super ghetto, but it worked," he said.
He estimated the shutter was open for about 600 seconds, each time he tried. He flubbed two preliminary attempts but the third one was the charm.
Adding to his challenge: Foot is colourblind. His father came along as bear protection and equipment assistant, and it was dad who told him how to arrange himself for the orb spinning so the correct colours were in a line across the final image.
To see the array of this world champion light painter's work, look up Foot's Facebook page named K.Foot Photography or look on Instagram by searching up the Spun-Ups Global Orbs keywords.
