Death of Incandescent Bulbs

I recently read an article on Feature Shoot about Jonathon Kambouris and his series of exploding medicine and decided to explode some things of my own. I had no idea what to expect from this, I'd never hit a light bulb with a hammer before, but I was pleasantly surprised by the results.

The hardest part was getting the exposure right. I had no idea what kind of light was going to come out of the bulb once I put a hammer through it, so I did some tests of with the light on and off, and shot for a happy medium.

I was trying to go for an effect of the bulb overheating and blowing itself up. This is clearly a composite, but I think a level of mystery still exists in the final product. As long as it isn't absolutely clear where the different pieces are, the image still works as a whole.

The composite starts from the bulb in a few different states, and then it's just a matter of retouching. Here are a couple of the base images.

On a side note, light bulbs are much more durable that I thought. It took me six tries to get this one to break.