Stone River at Night, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
This is a night view of the Andy Goldsworthy installation Stone River at the Stanford University campus. I used two exposures, one for the sky and one for Stone River. The blue on the right in the sky is the rising moon.
Exposure data: two captures (one at 30 seconds, one at 85 seconds); both captures 18mm, f/5.6 and ISO 200, tripod mounted.
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Within the Photoshop Statistics script, the default setting, Mean, produced some kind of average sampling, not a very striking result. Standard deviation was interesting, but not ultimately satisfying. Range was good, but Maximum was best. My assumption is that this blended in the maximum value for every sampled point, so it makes sense that it produced the brightest star trails….Night Vortex |
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First I tested the light with a one minute exposure at ISO 800 at f/3.5. Then I made an eight minute ISO 100 exposure (with in-camera long exposure noise reduction enabled) for the foreground. This image in its entirety is found below (I think it is interesting in its own right, with the still stars at the center and circular star trails around the edges)…..Between Earth and Sky |
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This one is a combination of sixteen exposures, taken early enough in the night that the moon was still lighting Tenaya Canyon and Half Dome….Yosemite by Moon and Star |
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Taken from old Inspiration Point, this image uses a layer mask and gradient to combine a brighter foreground image with a stacked set of captures exposed for the sky and stars….Down in the Valley |
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Many of my night photos are created in homage to Vincent van Gogh, who wrote in a letter to his brother Theo, “It often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly colored than the day.” The star swirl in this image seems particularly van Gogh, so I thought I’d name this one Starry Night, after one of his most famous works….Starry Night |
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This fisheye starry night stacked photo from Glacier Point consists of 12 captures at four minutes and ISO 100 and f/3.2, and one high ISO capture at four minutes and ISO 800 and f/4. The bright purple comes from sensor flaring in the higher ISO capture in the stack. I intentionally left the foreground dark (the way it looks in the individual exposures) rather than trying to blend in a brighter foreground….Starry Night 3 |
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Last night at Kirby Cove the weather was balmy. I ate a chicken sandwich from Bakesale Betty’s in the dark and called home to say goodnight to the kids while the timer took care of generating thirteen exposures, each at four minutes and f/5.6 (ISO 100). I had to throw away one of the exposures later because the airplane trails in it were just too distracting….Bridge and Stars |
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Against the backdrop of pounding surf and a light mist on the ocean, I photographed star trails behind Point Reyes Lighthouse in this portrait of the edge of night….Edge of Night |
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This view is looking north out from the tip of Point Reyes across Bodega Bay. This is a storm-bound, windswept coast, often shrouded in fog, so I was lucky to get clear skies for the star trails….Night View of Bodega Bay |
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I dressed for winter, and headed out into the night. The paths were icy but the stars were crisp and bright. I made my way to a clearing in the woods below Yosemite Falls. Easy enough in the day, but a little harder to find at night. I knew Polaris was right above the Falls…..First Light |
Slow start Saturday, convene at about 10AM, look at work, discuss previous night shoot, digital darkroom, break for lunch, daytime shooting, dinner. Shoot Saturday night until whenever. Big Sur, Monterey, points north.
Sunday start at about 11:00 AM for review and wrap-up. Some participants will likely stay to shoot Sunday night as well.
Stanford Memorial Church, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Briefly noted: wandering around Stanford University in Palo Alto the other evening, I photographed the Stanford Memorial Church as the moon rose.
Big Sur, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
South of Point Sur, the cloud cover opened up. There was still a moving fog bank, so I had no idea what this eight minute exposure of the Big Sur coast would show. I was pleased to see the Milky Way in the photo, and the sense this image gives of a world spinning in space.
I enjoyed a “personal retreat” at Esalen as my base for night photography along the Big Sur coast. It was great getting back to Esalen in the middle of the night and warming up in the baths. Esalen is probably the closest thing I’ve seen to heaven on earth. Except when I’m there I keep looking over my shoulder waiting for the Morlocks to show up.
Lonely Tree, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
On the outskirts of abandoned Fort Ord, California, an overpass leads from the ruined rows of barracks across the highway. I stood on this bridge in the fog, waiting for darkness to fall.
This tree seemed to me to stand alone, heedless of the traffic zooming by. I underexposed the image to increase the effect of isolation and gloom, and with the plan of brightening car lights later in the Photoshop darkroom.
Walking the Line, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
On a harbor bridge, I photographed the Moss Landing power plant. As I packed up to call it a night, I turned around and noticed the pattern of lights on the bridge—and the apparent line, mostly formed of shadow, dividing the sidewalk from the road.
I stopped down for good depth of field so the foreground and background would both be in focus.
Exposure data: 50mm, 20 seconds at f/20 and ISO 200, tripod mounted.
Moss Landing, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Whatever possessed “them” to “uglify” (to borrow a word from C.S.Lewis) this beautiful, working fishing harbor on Monterey Bay with a massive natural gas fired power plant? Bad move, guys. That said, it does light up the night most attractively!
Bixby Bridge 2, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
I crossed the road for another view of Bixby Bridge as the night turned to deeper blue and the nostalgic lines of car lights crossed the scene like ghosts in the wind and fog.
Bixby Bridge 1, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
On a recent foggy night, I photographed Bixby Bridge, one of the most iconic bridges on US 1 along the Big Sur coast of California.
Things started to get good, and I started to get really cold, when my exposure time reached 30 seconds. The upper red light you see as a line hanging the air is the tail light of a camper that was slowly driving across this 1930s bridge.
Exposure data: 16mm, 30 seconds at f/7.1 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.
Cannery Row, photo by Harold Davis.View this image larger.
The night holds many secrets. If you’ve been to the wonderous Monterey Aquarium, you’ll know Cannery Row as an example of a tourist McMalled Bif from a Back to the Future distopia. The building shown foreground in this photo is a ritzy hotel on Cannery Row.
I hate seeing people homeless, especially when surrounded by such affluence. But there is a certain delicious irony in the men hunkered down in the shadows under the hotel. In Steinbeck’s day, they would have been called “hobos”—and Cannery Row has built a tourist trap on the basis of nostalgia for that seediness. Things seem to have come full circle.
Funhouse, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
This is a view on a dark and foggy night of Sutro Baths, Cliff House, and Seal Rocks on the edge between San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean.
To create the image, I hand masked together five RAW captures in Photoshop. Each exposure was taken on tripod at f/5.6 and ISO 200, with exposure times between 10 and 55 seconds.
Stair Lighting, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Last night Joseph and I visited Sutro Baths for a shoot in the fog. This is the stairs going back up to the parking lot. Joseph held the light and I made a series of 30 second exposures. The fog combined with mercury vapor flood lighting to make the orange glow in the background.
Joseph’s idea was to create an image of a stairway to hell, which as an idea contrasts nicely with my recently blogged Stairway to Heaven, but should probably be going down rather than up, and likely would require physical model making or virtual compositing. A couple of my impossible images such as Calling Alice or Endless Stair might come close. (Check out my Impossible set on Flickr.)
My own, rather more modest, goal was to use the fog, night lighting, and shadows in an interesting composition.
City Dreams, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Wandering the streets of San Francisco at night with my tripod, it’s hard not to look up and wonder what people are dreaming. I was reminded of the old Doors song: “People are strange, when you’re a stranger.” To walk the night streets of a city observing is to always be the stranger.
Above: The hard edges of the shadows and lights made me wonder what drama was occuring within the lit window in this older building.
Below: After sunset as dusk faded to night, I looked up at this partially occupied modern apartment tower and saw one lamp burning.
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Transamerica Tower, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Wandering around downtown San Francisco last night taking photos, my tripod and I managed a “two-fer”: we were evicted from two locations. Now, the lot of the night photographer is to get kicked out of places. I’ve been told to move on by park rangers, cops, transit police, airport security, irate private property owners, and private security guards. And for some reason my poor, innocent tripod seems to trigger the worst of this harassment. Nobody seems to care if you pull out the old point-and-shoot, but stop for a moment to expand the legs of your carbon-fiber Gitzo and you might as well have a target painted on you for every two-bit officious official.
I’ve heard all kinds of reasons, from invocations of national security in a post-9/11 world to interference with foot traffic (when there’s no one around). What’s a poor tripod to do?
The general rule of law in the United States is that you can take photos of whatever you want in public places, with a few slight exceptions for things like military bases and nuclear installations. I carry around in my camera pack an article written by attorney Bert P. Krages II, Your Rights and Remedies When Stopped or Confronted for Photography that makes this pretty clear, so I can show it to people who try and stop me from photographing in public places.
The security guards last night were having none of it. Inside the Ferry Terminal the light was great, but they made me and my tripod leave without an articulated reason anyway. On one of the bridge overpasses in Embarcadero Center, the security guard said my tripod was a “tripping hazard”—hard to see with no one around, and me off to one side. You could make a pretty good argument that both these places are public: they are open to the public all the time, and largely paid for with public money. But the private security people can pretty much do what they want, it seems.
When I got to the tram platform on Market Street (below), I was afraid I would get a third tripod eviction notice, but it didn’t happen.
Wandering around this part of San Francisco at night is an interesting experience. There’s obviously tons of wealth: glossy people, glossy buildings. But everywhere I looked I saw people sleeping in alleys and parks. It is like I wandered into the “bad” alternative universe in the Back to the Future movie in which the evil bully Biff rules everything, and the future has gone sour.
Don’t we have better things to worry about than night photographers with tripods?
So I say, tripods of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your shutter speeds.
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