We don’t celebrate anniversaries much... except for the cat and the tubes’ birthdays.
This past year, we created a little less outdoors, but we put a lot of energy and love into consolidation, working behind the scenes on many parts of this tube journey.
Here is a little recap:
We made a few important updates to our tools, especially the tubes themselves, with the intention of building something we’re proud of for many years to come. The past 10 years were full of trial and error (and we love that), and we now feel confident this generation of tubes will last. Here’s the video we made about our 2026 tools: [link to the tubes 2026 video]
In the same spirit, this year we launched the AX2, an extension compatible with our current favorite flashlights. It helps us connect dimmers and attach tools like blades, whips, and fiber optics. More on that very soon (next week actually)!
A few months ago, we published our first book: Outdoor Light-Painting Photography: The Essential Field Guide. It’s available worldwide and brings together everything we learned in more than a decade of practice and experimentation. A huge thank you to everyone who got a copy and shared feedback. We appreciate you all! If you missed it, you can learn more about this project here: https://lightpainting.art/learn/book
We also taught more light-painting workshops than usual this year, mostly with high school and college students. Watching them experiment with light reminded us of something simple and important: starting should feel easier. That reinforeced our desire to make this art form even more accessible, especially for people who only have their phone as a camera. We’ve said for years that you don’t need much to start: a flashlight, paper, and a phone. But we saw that the first steps still felt too complex for many people.
So, inspired by our video light-painting desktop software (available since 2015), we built a mobile version: Virtual Ink Mobile. Our first short preview demo is in the 11th tube anniversary video. It just launched on the Play Store and App Store a few days ago. We will share more about it soon, but we think this should be part of the celebration. If you want to play with it, Use the redeem code NOW to get a one-month PRO access to our mobile app!
Android: find the app in the Play Store and enter code from the app itself
iPhone: download the test version from virtual.ink - https://testflight.apple.com/join/NA33SFrM
After months of focused indoor work, being in planning and builder mode, we’re happy to see these projects out in the world. And we’re starting to feel the urge to go back outside and play with the tubes again.
What about you? How has your journey with tube light painting been this past year?
Eric & Kim
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