Terence Chang

Terence Chang (Exxonvaldez on Flickr) took this stunning shot of the Pacific fog crawling over Sausalito. He said was standing nearby shooting before the fog came in. As he was hiking back to his car, the view below began to unfold, so he started shooting until his batteries were exhausted. The fog around the Golden Gate is sometimes spectacular to watch. But once it has come in, it's often as thick as pea soup. Terence was fortunate enough to see it with this translucent quality under a great full moon.

(Photo by Terence Chang)

Some of Terence's photographs are available for sale at his Imagekind site.

A Milestone: 500 Unique Visitors Per Day

Thanks to the nice folks at StatCounter.com, I've learned that The Night Photography Blog has reached a milestone. The week of January 18, 2010 was the first time that this site has averaged over 500 unique visitors per day. Not too bad for a blog that's focused on something as nichey (niche-like?) as night photography, eh?

(Marin Headlands, below Battery Spencer, by Andy Frazer)

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog, puts it in your RSS reader, and comments on my posting.

Wayne Jiang

A few weeks ago I came across an article in the San Jose Metro Magazine about local artist Wayne Jiang. Wayne has painted an impressive collection of night paintings, most of them from my stomping grounds of San Jose, CA. I've always been interested in seeing how other night photographers interpret the same location that I've photographed or visited. But to see this in a different media is amazing.

("Nightlights" - painting by Wayne Jiang)

One of the amazing things about Wayne's paintings, aside from the top-notch technique and craftsmanship, is that he seems to be exploring many of the same themes that you see in the better night photographs. For lack of better imagination on my own part, I'll just quote Tim Baskerville: "Surrealism, the mystery of place, solitude, and a heightened sense of the nature of things."

("Babe's Mufflers" - Painting by Wayne Jiang)

Unfortunately, the Metro article about Wayne is not on-line yet.

Wayne's Jiang's work is on exhibit at History San Jose through May 30, 2010.

Panocturnists

A few years ago I ran across the panoramic photography of Max Lyons and Brad Templeton. After experimenting during the day on some local fields, beaches and office buildings, and set off try shooting panoramas at night. Begining panorama photographers make the mistake of creating gee-whiz super long photographs for no reason other than to prove they can make super long photographs. But the best panorama photography serves much more than that. It seems to present an angle of view that is superior to what you can do with a camera with a standard 3:2, 4:3 or 1:1 aspect ratio. Panorama photography lends itself well to night photography because it's the intersection of two unusual segments of photography, so a pan-nocturnal photograph should be ultra-unusual. That doesn't mean that it's not crap. Hopefully, it does allow for opening up of new territory.

For the past year I've made a commitment to shoot some panos on every night photography trip. Night panos present an additional challenge compared to normal night photography. If each exposure requires a long exposure of five or ten minutes, then lighting (and weather) conditions can change between exposures. In fact, if you're shooting at the beach, the tide can even come in or go out. But new challenges mean new opportunities

("Crissy Field Pano", by Andy Frazer)

Tim Baskerville has also begun a section within The Nocturnes site dedicated to panoramic night photography.

For some other examples of great night photographs, check out Joe Reifer's Mad Mouse Rollercoaster, and Aaron Hobson's website. For some outstanding daytime pano photography, you really need to see Nuri Bilge Ceylen's site

Upcoming Workshops in Texas

Maybe I should have waited a few days before writing posts about the night photography workshops in Pearsonville, CA, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Pittsburgh, PA. For those of you in the great state of Texas who may be feeling left out, Noel Kerns will be conducting a night photography and light painting workshop in Brownwood, TX on February 26th & 27th.

(Photo by Noel Kerns)

There's more information here. For examples of what you might find in Brownwood, TX, take a look at Noel's Flickr set.

Upcoming workshops by The Nocturnes

In addition to the night photography workshops offered by Troy Paiva, Joe Reifer and Gabriel Biederman; there are also two night photography programs offered by Tim Baskerville in February and March.

(Photo by Tim Baskerville)

Tim will be teaching the seven week course 'Night Photography' at the College of Marin, Kentfield, CA campus starting February 5, 2010. It is designed for new-comers and as a follow-up to people who have taken the Nocturnes workshop. Details are here.

Tim will also be offering another San Francisco Full Moon Nightphotography Workshop on Friday-Sunday March 26-28, 2010. Details are here.

More Night Photography Workshops

The recent Pearsonville Night Photography Workshops, hosted by Troy Paiva and Joe Reifer, have become so popular that Troy and Joe have added an additional workshop this Spring. There will now be workshops in both March (27th-29th) and April (24th-26th), 2010, both held in the Pearsonville Junkyard near Ridgecrest, CA. There are two spots available in the March workshop, and only a few spots left in the April workshop. There's more information available on the dedicated website.

(Photo by Joe Reifer)

For those of you who prefer an urban setting, Gabriel Biderman is offering a two night workshop in Pittsburgh on January 30-31st.

(Photo by Gabriel Biderman)

Mike Marfell

I first met Bay Area night photographer Mike Marfell at a Nocturnes shoot at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard organized by Tim Baskerville. Mike introduced himself to me, then promptly disappeared for the evening with another group of photographers. It turned out that we live fairly close to each other in the South Bay, so we've since shot together many times in the past year. Mike was originally turned on to night photography after seeing some of Troy Paiva's night photography on the internet.

This shot was taken at Battery Mendell in the Marin Headlands. In the distance is the Golden Gate Bridge and the northwest skyline of San Francisco.