More Night Photography Workshops

For those of you who missed Troy Paiva's and Joe Reifer's light painting workshop at the Pearsonville Junkyard last March, there's going to be another one in October. And there's one opening available for any up-and-coming advanced light painters. If you get it, tell them you heard it here.

Check out some of their past students' work on Flickr.

They're also planning a one-night workshop in Northern California in September. Check out Joe's blog for more details.

Museum of Contemporary Photography

The Chicago-based Museum of Contemporary Photography has put their collection of 8500 photographs on-line at their newly-revamped website. The photographs don't seem to be tagged for easy searching, but you can search by words in the titles, as well as by photographer.

(Night Bathing, by Louise Dahl-Wolfe)

The advanced search feature is even less interesting: search by, among other things, "culture", "collector" or "place collected". Although searching for "night" in the title does return some interesting material.

(Hot Shot Eastbound, Laeger, West Virginia, by O. Winston Link)

Neverland at Night

With all of the attention on Michael Jackson's recent passing, I thought it would be a good time to draw your attention to the gutsy night photography of Jon Haeber and Scott Haefner who have each visited Neverland multiple times under the cover of darkness.

("Farewell MJ", by Jon Haebner)

Jon also has a write-up of his trips to Neverland on his great UrbEx blog Bearings.

It may be worth pointing out that Neverland is NOT, and never was, open to the public. Especially at night. So don't get any crazy ideas and try to sneak in there over the long weekend :-)

"5DMk2 - Today's Best Camera for Night Photography"

The On-Sight blog has a post titled "5DMk2 - Today's Best Camera For Night Photography". Although you Nikonites may or may not agree with his Canon-centric thesis, there are some very interesting observations about shooting at night with this camera.

(Exposure experiments using ISO6400, photo by On-Sight Blog)

I particularly like his idea for using ISO6400 to work out your exposures before shooting the final image at ISO100 because the ISO6400 "seconds" exposure translates directly into ISO100 "minutes" exposures. For example, 15 seconds at ISO6400 translates to 15 minutes at ISO 100. It seems to obvious. Why didn't I think of that?

Thanks to Lance Keimig at TheNightSkye for finding this one.

Will Steacey

"I know the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of night can not be explained in the day, because they do not then exist."

-Ernest Hemingway

I recently came across Will Steacy's work on Jorg Colberg's Conscientious blog. Will's project Down These Mean Streets features his night photography taken in questionable urban neighborhoods at night using a large format camera. Jorg also provided an interview with Will.

(Photo by Will Steacy)

Book News: Lynn Seville and Troy Paiva

Two announcement this week regarding night photography books.

First, Troy Paiva's second book, Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration, was selected as the Best Special Trade Photography Book of the year at the recent New York Book Festival. This is a great recognition, especially since Annie Leibovitz's Annie Lebovitz at Work took third place. I know quite a few people who own Night Vision, and everyone agrees that it is a "must have" for anyone who is interested in night photography.

(Photo by Troy Paiva)

Second, Lynn Seville's latest book Night/Shift. This hardcover text includes 80 color photographs, with an Introduction by Arthur C. Danto, art critic for The Nation. Many night photographers may already be familiar with Lynn's first book, Acquainted with the Night. Details of the book tour can be found on Lynn's website.

(Night/Shift cover, by Lynn Seville)

Brian Ulrich

Brian Ulrich has created some of the most memorable photographs of our society's appetite for consumption; sneaking around in supermarkets and big box stores with a camera. Check out his Copia project, as well as an insightful interview with him.

He also does some fine night photography:

(Target, 2008, by Brian Ulrich)