Tubes of light

I regularly visit a photography website set up by a British photographer living Japan, Martin Bailey - www.martinbaileyphotography.com [null]. Martin sets an assignment every couple of months in the podcast he produces. The latest theme is ‘abstract’ so I thought I'd try shooting something for this. I had a brainwave to shoot some coloured drinking straws, lit by a torch and here is the result. The first challenge was finding the right straws (harder than you'd think!) but I finally discovered these after visiting about 5 shops. In the end I used two different torches to light the straws, a white maglite to light the front edge and a blue LED torch to shine through the straws from behind. The shutter speed ended up being 25 seconds (I turned out the main light in the room once I'd focussed manually) so I ‘painted’ some light on with the two torches. I hope it fits the abstract theme!