Lane Hartwell

Six years ago I bought some colored gels from Lane Hartwell via the Nocturnes Message Board. A few years later she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and got involved with the local tribe of night photographers. I've been shooting with Lane and some of her co-consiparators for the past year.

(photo: Lane Hartwell)

Lane was the person who got me interested in Jeff Brouws' nighttime carnival work. Recently, she has spent a lot of time shooting both environment and the people of the local carnivals that have come through the East Bay. During the past month she has produced a lot of great work photographing the performers of the Circo Hermanos Cabellero.

(photo: Lane Hartwell)

You can see more carnival photographs here.

Most night photographers eventually find a specialty within the realm of nocturnal shooting. Abandoned buildings are always popular, as are beaches, cityscapes and maritime and industrial sites. But Lane is one of the few night photographers who has taken an interest in the tricky (i.e., "handheld") world of photographing people at night. She says she has always had a fascination with people who are living a little off the beaten path. She says that mixing her love of night photography with people was an accident, but she's finding it's working for her. She has discovered that abandoned sites, by themselves, are a little too lonely for her, and putting a person into the mix not only makes her feel better, but adds a sort of life to those places. Her dream was always to be a photojournalist, so projects such as Circo Hermanos Cabellero and the East Bay Rats works along those lines.