Several companies make programmable LED hoops. You can choose the pattern, colour, and speed of emitted light. Some of these smart hoops have up to 9000 possible combinations. It was clear that during our photo shoot, Jusztina and I would only be able to sample a few of these.
These hoops allow circus artists to create dazzling effects and geometric trails best captured using long-exposure photography and a dark, nearly black background. We therefore scheduled the shoot after sunset, which means late afternoon in Scotland during the winter months.
I like to freeze my subject at the beginning of the exposure and to achieve this, I used two small flashes. One to my left, and the other one behind Jusztina to my right to provide separation from the background.
We shot at the Scottish Parliament because it is pretty quiet after business hours. It also has pools of water allowing us to shoot reflections. We didn’t use that for the first part of the shoot, and in fact, we could have picked pretty much any location for the long-exposure photography.
But Jusztina had her water spirit costume on, and we had to make full use of it. A water spirit is a kind of supernatural being found in the folklore of many cultures. In Celtic mythology, each-uisges, kelpies, and nuggles are horse-like creatures, while the gwragedd annwn and selkie take the form of a woman.
After we were satisfied we had plenty of usable hoop photos, we decided to move on to a few water spirit shots by the pool.
by 
