Playing with UV

My boyfriend is a complete photography nerd, and he has been getting some pretty cool stuff out from uni lately to use with his work (he studies Photography & Digital imaging - so basically the Sciency stuff behind photography)! Last week it was an Infra Red camera which made everything go blue, which me and my housemates had some fun with! This week it was a UV flash and a UV camera; so I thought I was post some of the photos as I haven't had much to blog in a while!

I found it quite fascinating to begin with that peoples hair doesn't glow, but mine does :| We then realised what it might be; I use platinum shampoo on my hair once a week to keep it a fresh blonde colour, and had literally used it the night before, and it most probably has a fluorescent chemical in it to help it glow blonde! 

The first cool thing I got shown was seeing sun damage with the UV camera and flash, which was freaky to see, but again we don't fully understand it, for instance I'm not really one to be in the sun, I always have SPF 20 foundation on and have never been to a hot country, yet it showed up my skin as being more damaged than all of my boyfriends housemates, so it could just generally be my freckly skin! 

Here is my potentially sun damaged skin (excuse my non make-up face)!

 

So freaky...

We also played around with sun cream - which obviously stops sun damage - so it makes a really cool effect with the UV camera as seen here:

 

Kind of looks like I just have a face mask on though, as I couldn't stand the smell near my eyes! Here is some more of Thomas; before, showing just the sun damage:

 

And with half his skin covered in sun protection (SPF 50+)

 

One thing it's creepily good at is showing up bacteria! Callum had a UV pen so Joe attacked the cupboard with it (can you tell they hate their house?) :P

 

They need to clean their cupboards... 

We also soaked a pink highlighter in some bubble mixture for a few hours and then blew bubbles with it, using a UV flash and normal SLR camera;

 

 This made some amazing effects! 

Tonic water has a fluorescent chemical in it, which makes it have the bitter taste, so therefore is fluorescent under UV light. Thomas had a go at doing the Mentos trick with it!

 

Then Joe progressed to throw it all over Callum...

 

 

So yeah...would definitely recommend playing with UV if you ever get the chance, it may seem nerdy, but was actually so much fun! 

Photos taken by Thomas Langley