Edgar Martins (Getting Someone to Hold Still for Thirty Minutes)

One of the reasons you rarely seen people in long exposure night photography is because people who move during a long exposure either become blurry, or they disappear. Edgar Martins, who has recently achieved temporary fame through controversy, wanted to include a person in his long exposure night photographs of Portuguese beaches.

Although mannequins have recently been spotted posing at various Bay Area night photography locations. But Martins chose a more novel approach. He hired a living statue street performer (they're those people who stand perfectly still on the street corner for half an hour and try to collect donations from tourists... if you've never seen one, stop by Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco on any weekend day).

(Untitled from the series "Accidental Theorist", by Edgar Martins)

Read how he did it. Scroll down to the Accidental Tourist and read the description below the photograph. (via)

Steve Anderson

Monterey-based night photographer Steve Anderson took this great shot of the Moss Landing power plant under a full moon. Notice the warm glow inside the steam strails.

(Full Moon Stacks, by Steve Anderson)

Steve has also created a great collection of work from the decommissioned army base Fort Ord.

Anak Krakatau at Night

Anak Krakatau is an off-shoot from the famous Krakatoa volcano that gave us the biggest volcanic explosion in modern history. Anak Krakatau surfaced from under the ocean in 1927, and has been belching fire and smoke continuously since earlier this year.

Marco Fulle, of the Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, took this great photograph of "Anak" from the nearby island of Rakata. Notice the stars of the Big Dipper just above the volcano.

(Photo by Marco Fulle)

You can see more of Marco's photographs of Anak K. right here.

Found in Astronomy Photo of the Day.

Julius Shulman (1910-2009)

Modernist architectural photographer extraordinaire, and part-time night photographer, Julius Shulman (Wikipedia) passed away last night in Los Angeles at age 98. Shulman is often credited with creating the allure of the Southern California lifestyle.

Below is his most famous photograph (a night photograph, no less), Case Study House No.22:

(Photo by Julius Shulman)

I've always had a soft spot for Julius Shulman. When I first became serious about my photography, I shot primarily daytime photographs on black-and-white infrared film. At that time, Shulman was the only big-name photographer known to me who had praised infrared photography. I had one of his books where he suggested that photographers had not yet exploited the full potential of infrared film for architectural photography. He instantly became my here. About five years later my focus switched from daytime infrared to night photography. As you can see above, Shulman was also doing some great night work.

So, here's to the only photographer I knew of who had his feet in both of the photography styles that I loved.

Most of Shulman's photographs reside in the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Here is his obituary, as well as a video where he talks about the photograph above. Here's a wonderful photograph of Shulman at work.

Odds and Ends: Reviews, Shows and Workshops

Some night photography odds and ends:

(Photo by Mike Hows)

1. Troy Paiva and Joe Reifer will be hosting a ONE-NIGHT light painting workshop at the Big M Automotive yard in Williams, CA on Saturday, September 5th. This is different than their weekend workshops which are held at the Pearsonville Junkyard. See Joe's blog for more information.

2. Troy and Joe will join Mike Hows for a night photography show of their Big M Automotive work at Lucky Ju Ju Pinball Art Gallery in Alameda, CA. The reception will be Friday, September 4th. Lucky Ju Ju's is a great place to hang out and play some vintage pinball machines. See Joe's blog for more information.

3. Nocturne's founder Tim Baskerville has written an eloquent review of Lynn Saville's latest book Night Shift on The Nocturnes Blog.

4. Tim will also be hosting another San Francisco Bay Area Nocturnes Workshop on September 3-5th, along with a followup meeting on the 12th.

5. The deadline for entries in the Nocturnes' Pannocturnist photo contest is July 31st!

6. If you haven't noticed, the sun began setting earlier about one week ago. Longer nights are on their way!

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 :-)