Guerilla Lighting

Martin Lupton has taken gel-lighting one step further. Under his direction, lots of people with flashlights and colored gels gather in various public places throughout London, and they all light up one assigned spot on a wall or some sort of structure. The scene is then photographed, and the crowd moves on to another spot.

(photo by, I think, Martin Lupton)

I guess this is the performance-art version of the Lost America?

Thanks to Brian Chapman for bringing this Neatorama post to my attention.

Fulvio Bortolozzo's Show "Olimpia"

A few days ago I mentioned Fulvio Bortolozzo, an Italian night photographer whom I was not previously aware of (yes, I end my sentences with propositions... deal with it). Fulvio has a show called "Olimpia" coming up next month in Torino, Italy. I've tried to justify to my wife that I *need* to attend this one, but she's not going for it.

(photo by Fulvio Bortolozzo)

"OLIMPIA" photographs by Fulvio Bortolozzo
TORINO (Italy) MARCH 6 - APRIL 28, 2007
OPEN: from hours 18,00 of MARCH 6, 2007
CENTER: LIBRERIA AGORÀ, via Santa Croce 0/E, TORINO (Italy)
HOURS: from Tuesday to Saturday 9,30 - 19,00, Monday 15,30-19,00 (closed Sunday)
INFO: tel. +39 011 835.973

This is the first exhibition of the project "Olimpia" in Torino. "Olimpia", realized during the years 2004-2006, is a photographic trace of the nocturnal movements of the author through the new city landscape of "olympic" Torino observed in the night for best concentration of the look.

Fort Ord Mob Scene

Fort Ord is an abandoned Army base just north of Monterrey, California. The base sat unused since the military moved out in the mid 1990's. With over 4000 buildings, the place was begging to be visited by urban explorers and night photographers. Sadly, most of us who thought we were so in-tune with abandoned locales in the Bay Area waited until only a year ago to begin exploring and photographing "Ord".

The bulk of Fort Ord has been systematically demolished over the past year and a half. However, a lesser-known part of the fort, the East Garrison, remainded completely untouched until earlier this month. In late January, Monterrey photographer Steve Anderson informed many of us that the East Garrison would soon be sealed off and demolished. Fortunately, the last days (nights) of public access coincided with a weekend of clear full moon skies.

(photo by Andy Frazer)

Over a period of four nights during the first weekend of February, many Bay Area night photographers decsended on the East Garrison. This mob included Rikki Feldman, Joe Reifer, Jon Haeber, Steve Walsh, Troy Paiva and myself. Many of the photographs from that last week can be found on the Flickr Fort Ord Pool.

(East Garrison Theater, by Rikki Feldman)

I've written a few times about the importance of nurturing your social network in order to keep your photography motivated and inspired. But don't underestimate the importance of keeping on top of late-breaking news through your networks. In this case, if fellow Flickerite Steve Anderson had warned us of the sudden fate of the East Garrison, none of us would have probably had a chance to shoot it on that last weekend. I can think of many other examples of some of my favorite night locations that I only learned about through these sort of networks. In fact, I can trace most of the best night locations in the Bay Area back to night photographers who were featured on this blog (most notably: Troy Paiva, Rikki Feldman, Steve Walsh and Joe Reifer).

Also, I can't close without thanking the person who gave us a Flickr introduction to Fort Ord, and our first amazing tour of the base: Flickr member Wizmo.

P.S. I have no idea why the hyperlinks are showing up in a different color in this post.

Jerry L Day

Southern California night photographer Jerry L Day has updated his night photography website Dark Sky Dreams.

(Belle Rocks, by Jerry L Day)

Jerry has some wonderful work of the natural landscape of the southwest United States, including Arches National Park and numerous ghost towns. His seems to do great work with a flashlight (as opposed to a flash) with amber gels, which really accentuate the desert features.

Fulvio Bortolozzo

Fulvio Bortolozzo is an Italian architectural photographer. His site includes quite a bit of night work.

(Rondissone, Torino, Italy, by Fulvio Bortolozzo)

Fulvio's photographs capture brightly-lit urban landscapes, including both the old and the new; and both the stunning and the ordinary.

Nobuhiro Fukui

Nobuhiro Fukui's website features photographs of Tokyo at night. His images retain a dark, under-exposed appearance, which is probably intended to force the viewer to look harder into the image.

(photo by Nobuhiro Fukui)

Nobuhiro also has his own blog, however it seems to be in Japanese. I'd love to see an English version of his blog.

Found on JM Colberg's Conscientious blog.

The Night Skye Blog

Lance Keimig of The Night Skye has been shooting at night much longer than I have. He already has a great website of his night work, and now he has a blog, too.

(photo by Lance Keimig)

Lance was one of my original night photogrpaphy instructors when I took the Nocturnes Workshop in San Francisco back in 2002. He was featured my night photography documentary film Night of the Living Photographers *. We filmed Lance's segment at Lance's Mono Lake Night Photography Workshop in 2004.

Although Lance often uses a digital camera for his professional photographic work, he still prefers to use traditional black-and-white film for his fine art work. He also uses an Ebony 23SW camera, which is even more unusual.

* Note. I have since updated this film to include a segment with Steve Harper, the first person to teach a college-level course in night photography. However, this new version has not been uploaded, yet. But it will, soon.

Avedon's "In the American West"

We interrupt our regularly-scheduled night photogrpahy posts for an important announcement...

I try to keep this blog focused 100% on night photography. When I find something worth posting that's not directly related to night photography, I try to twist it to find something of interest to night photographers. But this morning I read something in the newspaper that I have to share and, I have to admit, I can't find any connection between this story and night photography.

Before I got hooked on night photography eight years ago, portraiture was one of my favorite photographic outlets. In particular, Richard Avedon's In the American West was my absolute favorite portraiture project that I had ever seen.

("Sandra Bennett, twelve year old, Rocky Ford, Colorado, August 23, 1980", by Richard Avedon)

A few months ago I got a copy of Avedon at Work in the American West by Laura Wilson. This behind-the-scenes version of In the American West re-sparked my interest in Richard Avedon and portraiture. This morning I noticed that this show is actually on display, as we speak, just up the road at Stanford University (near Palo Alto, CA).

The show, titled In the American West, Photographs by Richard Avedon, is at the Cantor Center for the Arts (on the Stanford campus) through May 6th, 2007. And the best part... it's free!

More on the D200 Long Exposures

Joe Reifer has posted a more detailed analysis of how the Nikon D200's space-shaking* long exposure capability stacks up against the prevailing competition (i.e., Canon), as well as an explanation of why it's significant.

Canon night photographers (many who are still standing around with that deer-in-the-headlights look on their faces) will benefit, though. In the long run, all competition in the digital space is good for everyone. The news about the Nikon D200 should only motivate Canon (and hopefully Pentax and Sony and everyone else) to improve even faster.

* That's the opposite of "Earth-shaking".

Photo Search

I love wasting time surfing through photographs on the photo-sharing site Flickr. One way to keep focused on interesting photographers is to carefully build a Contacts list of photographers that you admire. Another way is to use the Flickr Photo Search feature and search for keywords. The problem with Flickr's Photo Search is that it displays 23 images per returned page, and you have to spend a lot of time scrolling up and down that page just to see the 23.

(Half Moon Bay Pier, by Andy Frazer)

Two weeks ago, Thomas Hawk posted a blog entry about a new tool called FlickrLeech. This site, which I don't believe is associated with either Flickr or Yahoo!, uses the Flickr API to search for keywords, and then display nothing but thumbnails, 200 at a time, on your screen. You can then quickly eyeball the images that you're in. You can literally search through a few thousand images per minute.

Great for night photographers! Try entering the search phrases "nocturnes" into the FlickrLeech tool bar.