GLOW 2026: a city full of light art
GLOW is an annual light art festival in Eindhoven and takes place this year for the 21st time. The 2026 edition is themed CONNECT, focusing on the connection between people, art, and technology. Throughout the city, dozens of light artworks can be admired, created by both Dutch and international artists.
The walking route through the city center is about five kilometers long and takes you past various installations, projections, and buildings. This year, light artworks can also be viewed in Helmond, Best, Oirschot, Veldhoven, and Lieshout.
For beginners, GLOW can be particularly interesting. You are dealing with a unique combination of bright light sources and a dark environment. This can result in incredibly beautiful images, but it also makes photography challenging. Fortunately, you don't need years of experience in night photography to come home with beautiful images.
Photographing light art: why is it so difficult?
When you take a photo in the evening, your camera tries to capture enough light to create a well-exposed image. At a light festival, this can become quite complicated. The surroundings are often dark, while the light installations themselves are extremely bright.
Your camera then tries to make the dark surroundings lighter. The result? The light installation itself becomes overexposed, and the colors turn into large white areas. Exactly the details you want to photograph disappear as a result.
A good first step is to consciously make your photo slightly darker. You can easily do this with the exposure compensation on your camera. For example, try -1 EV and then check the result. This usually gives the light installation more color and detail, while keeping the surroundings dark.
What camera settings do you use at GLOW?
There is no single perfect setting for photographing light art. Some installations are constantly moving, while others are quite static. Still, there are a few handy starting points you can begin with.
Start with a stationary artwork
When photographing a stationary artwork, you can relatively easily experiment with different settings. For example, set your camera to A or Av mode, so you can choose the aperture while the camera determines the shutter speed.
Start with an aperture of f/4 and an ISO value of 800. Then check which shutter speed your camera selects. If it becomes too long to shoot handheld sharply, you can further increase the ISO.
Did you happen to bring a tripod? Then you can use a lower ISO value and extend the shutter speed. This reduces unnecessary image noise and allows you to capture more details in the dark environment.
What if the light installation is moving?
With moving light art, it can get a bit more complicated. Suppose you are photographing a projection whose colors and shapes are constantly changing. With a long shutter speed, these different moments are combined into one image. This can create interesting effects, but sometimes it causes the shapes you wanted to capture to disappear.
Therefore, also try a shorter shutter speed, such as 1/125 or 1/250 second. This allows you to capture one specific moment from the moving installation. Depending on the amount of light, you may need to increase the ISO or use a larger aperture for this.
Experiment with long shutter speeds
A light festival is also a perfect opportunity to experiment with longer shutter speeds. Especially when you want to incorporate the movement of visitors and the city lights into your photos. For this, set your camera on a tripod and choose a longer shutter speed, such as two seconds. While the buildings and stationary parts of the light installation remain sharp, passing visitors can turn into motion blur.
This works particularly well when many people walk past a piece of art. Instead of waiting for everyone to be out of the frame, you can make the crowd part of your photo.
Try different shutter speeds, such as one, two, and five seconds. You will notice that the atmosphere of the photo changes significantly. With longer exposures, people can even partially disappear, as they do not stay in the same place long enough.
When using longer exposure times, be aware that moving light installations can also blur. Sometimes this results in a particularly abstract image, while in other artworks it may not work as well.
Take a look at reflections and mirrors
During GLOW, the light artworks are of course the main attraction. However, the artwork itself does not always have to be the subject of your photo. For example, also look at the reflections of the installations in a shop window, a window, or a puddle. Especially after it has rained, wet cobblestones can beautifully reflect the colors of the artworks.
By keeping your camera a bit lower to the ground, you can allow such a reflection to take up a much larger part of your composition. Sometimes this results in a photo where the light artwork is almost visible twice.
You can also experiment well with focusing. For example, focus on a reflection in a window while the original artwork remains out of focus in the background. This creates a very different image than if you simply stand directly in front of the installation.
And don't forget the visitors! A silhouette of someone looking at a large light artwork can help to clarify the scale of the installation. Moreover, this adds a human element to the photo.
Photographing with your smartphone
Don't have a separate camera? No worries, you can also take interesting photos with your smartphone during GLOW. Modern smartphones often have a night mode that combines multiple shots to create a brighter image. This works especially well with stationary subjects, but can produce an unwanted effect with moving light installations. The different shots are combined, causing moving shapes to blur or distort.
Therefore, also try the regular photo mode, especially when the light installation itself is already quite bright. Tap on the brightest part of the artwork on your screen to focus on it and determine the exposure. On many smartphones, you can then also manually lower the brightness.
Does your phone have a Pro or manual mode? Then you can often set the shutter speed and ISO yourself. This gives you more control over how motion is captured.
If you want to use a longer shutter speed with your phone, a small phone tripod is handy. You can also place your smartphone on a stable surface, as long as you ensure it can't shift or fall.
Visit GLOW 2026
GLOW can be visited until Saturday, November 14. In Eindhoven, the light artworks can be viewed daily from 6:30 PM to 11:00 PM. In Helmond, Best, Oirschot, Veldhoven, and Lieshout, the program ends at 10:00 PM.
The festival is free to access. Only for the drone performance The Breathing Collective at the Philips Stadium do you need a ticket.
Do you mainly want to take photos? Then it’s wise not to try to walk the entire route as quickly as possible. Instead, take a bit more time at a few installations that interest you. This way, you can try out different angles, shutter speeds, and compositions.
And perhaps most importantly: don't forget to occasionally lower your camera to simply enjoy the light art.
More information about the route and all the artworks can be found at gloweindhoven.nl.
