Light Painting at RGB Light Fest

In 2016 RGB Light Experience – Roma Glocal Brightness was the first urban festival of light installations, light art and videomapping in Rome, Italy. This year the RGB Festival was held over an area 4 km long. National and International light painting artists came together to create a series of stunning light art installations making the city glow. One of the artist invited to take part in this event was Maria Saggese so I caught up with her to find out more about the event.

LPP ∇ Hey Maria thank you for taking the time to answer some questions! How did you become involved in RGB Light Experience?
MS ∇ I have known RGB Light Fest since the first edition, but I had attended the event only as a visitor. I was impressed, it was the first Light Festival in Rome, and one of the few in Italy. I had the pleasure of meeting the event’s managers Diego Labonia and Emanuela Bellezza at the first Light Painting Meetup in Rome last March. They admired the magic of Light Painting and we decided to collaborate to spread the light painting in this new edition of RGB festival.

LPP ∇ It looks l this was a large event with a lot of people! Was this a one night event or were there several nights?
MS ∇ RGB Itinerary was 4km long, accessible by feet and/or by bike, from Pigneto to Tor Pignattara. It was a great event with about 60.000 visitors in 3 days!

LPP ∇ What types of light painting events were there?
MS ∇ There were many Light Painting activities we held Light Painting Workshops, Light Painting Photo Booths and Massive Collaboration for the last night at Acquedotto Alessandrino.

LPP ∇ Do you have the light painting photo booth every night?
MS ∇ Yes, every night. The first night it was held by Children of Darklight, the second night of me and last night by me and two other Roman light painters, Ilaria Toscano and Luca Romano. Every night there were a lot of visitors who waited for the photobooth, about 200 people every night who were fascinated and amazed by the technique. Everyone was happy to be portrayed with this technique and It was a great experience to involve them in this creative way.

LPP ∇ What other Light Painting Artist were involved, who did you work with?
MS ∇ I worked with one of the best Light Painting artists from Spain: Alfredo Àlvarez (Children of Darklight), Patricia Díez & the great artist Sfhir. It was a great team and we worked all together to create something special for the Festival.

LPP ∇ I also saw a really cool collaboration image of a woman pouring water into a field can you tell me about this, who was involved and how was this image achieved?
MS ∇ Yes we created a colossal picture, performed on October 29th in Acquedotto alessandrino. The main team was made up of me, Frodo Álvarez Dkl, Sfhir Ogt Lcsiete, Patricia Díez. The idea was evolving until the final sketch performed by sfhir. It wasn’t an easy job. There was hardly time for planning due to the shortage of facilities and means. But our commitment is always to do something big, different and… colossal. We were supported by Es Olympus and Olympus Italia and we used Olympus cameras with Live composite mode. We did several shots and tests of this image, and we worked many hours to get the best result. The model was Patricia Díez, we first illuminated her in the foreground, then Sfhir and Frodo created the “river” crossing the aqueduct. After that we illumined the background, the aqueduct, the lawn, and trees. Sfhir created some hand drawing of fishes and a moonlight effect. It was a an hard job, but finally at 4am we had the perfect shot!

LPP ∇ Sounds like it was a great opportunity to collaborate and share the Light Painting art form with many people. Is there anything else you would like to add?
MS ∇ I want to thank everyone for the amazing work and all the RGB staff for giving us the opportunity to participate in the festival and spread the Art of light painting.