Posts Tagged: night photography
Red Velvet Trailer
Red Velvet Trailer #1 (click image to view large)
I brought my camera along to a gathering of friends the other night. Since I had no tripod with me, I had to prop the camera up on some cups and other items to get longer exposures. This one, at about 1/6th of a second, was one of the more intriguing shots to result.
Mission Beach Night – Pseudo-Holgaroid
Mission Beach Night #12
Mission Beach Night #8
Mission Beach Night #5
Mission Beach Night #3
Mission Beach Night #16- Mission Beach Night #12
An alternate treatment of night photos taken late last month at Mission Beach, San Diego. Monochrome versions of some were posted yesterday.
Mission Beach Night B&W
Mission Beach Night #9 BW
- Mission Beach Night #9 BW
Mission Beach Night #4 BW
Mission Beach Night #16 BW
Mission Beach Night #14 BW
Mission Beach Night #12 BW
Mission Beach Night #10 BW
High-contrast monochromes of some night photos taken in San Diego in late February. I’m also working on color versions with highly processed effects.
Night Excursion
#2 (click image to view large)
A first pass at working with some night shots from earlier this evening.
#1 (click image to view large)
#3 (click image to view large)
Location, Location, Location
"XXX" From the "Where in Albany" series. Albany CA. January, 2011
It was a spooky evening for photography in Eastbania last night when I went out to shoot for the “Where in Albany” game feature on albany.patch.com.
The current obsession in Albany is the locating of a marijuana dispensary somewhere in our little town. The current application to open a dispensary was coming before the City Council again tonight, and it was expected that the applicants’ appeal would be rejected. It would locate it in a largely residential neighborhood on Solano Ave. But there is another application right behind that one that locates a dispensary down in the light industrial edge of town next to the train tracks.
With all that in mind last night, I set out to photograph the locations under consideration. The Solano location results weren’t all that interesting. But the fog helped produce something of interest down by the tracks.
"Light Silhouette" / © 2011 Neo Serafimidis
I suppose that all in all, this looks more like where expects to find one’s pot than a row of quaint storefronts surrounded by suburban-style homes.
Everyday
Fire on a winter evening.
I may be headed for a train wreck, or at least another large public failure. I’ve noticed recently that I have really slacked off taking photos. I still have a few regular things I’m doing, but the maniacal, camera-always-in-hand behavior has been tapering steeply away. So, when Darren mentioned to me yesterday that he was joining a Project 365 group on flickr, I knew right away that I needed that, too. This is a group where one takes one picture and posts it every day for a year. It might sound easy, but it’s a tall order. I know there will be many, many days where I won’t feel inspired or energetic enough to shoot, process and post.
So today Darren sent me the link to the particular group he had in mind (there are several on flickr and elsewhere), and I joined. And being the anal retentive sort, I really wanted to start the project on January 1, so I scrambled to see what I had over the last couple days so that I could catch up and get going. By a stroke of sheer luck, I had something from the first two days of the year.
The first shot above is a totally random shot of the fire at a little New Year’s Eve dinner party of neighborhood parents who were not going to make it to any of the usual hipster spots in SF to celebrate. Ah, parenthood. Thanks Bea and Steve. It was fabulous to be included.
Bottling the 2008 Cabernet
The second shot is from a Sunday afternoon wine making session of our little winemaking group. That’s where Darren told me about his project 365 intentions. Thanks for the tip, Darren! And thanks for trading off corking the bottles; that’s hard on the lower back. Anyway, in this photo Sarah and Ruta’s arm are filling bottles with the 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon that the group made before we joined.
Telephone Pole and Shopping Carts
Finally, the third shot is from a shoot I did for the albany.patch.com feature I get to do, “Where in Albany…“. I’d tell you more about this particular shot, but I’d end up giving away the answer to this week’s play. I can’t do that until someone has guessed it. All I can say is that I serendipitously ran into my friends Emily and Ken as they were leaving a restaurant and I was wandering the streets looking for inspiration. Ken and I ended up standing there talking for a bit, and after awhile some other people came out of the restaurant. Standing around with a largish camera on a tripod often invites questions (sometimes confrontational ones!) and that’s how I ended meeting a couple other working photographers, including Chris Fuzi.
But I haven’t yet said what the risk in all this is.
It’s this. Once I got home and finished processing some shots, posting my albany.patch shot, and my flickr Project 365 posts, I happened to read an article on Mashable about WordPress putting out a challenge to bloggers to commit to posting everyday (or every week) in 2011.
Well, I can tell you that the drop-off in my blog posts has been bothering me for longer than the drop-off in photographing. So, now I’m committed to blogging everyday. That’s TWO 365 commitments, which is nuts. Because if there is one thing you can count on, it’s that I have no follow through. Naturally, combining the two and posting on the blog about the photo of the day over on flickr has already occurred to me, and this post is essentially the first one to take that approach. But still…
So, there it is. Check in regularly so you know when to start berating me publicly for flaking out!
Night Hike in Del Valle
Cub Scouts hiked for hidden treasure in Del Valle State Park.
New Street Light
Albany CA. 2010
I just noticed tonight that the street light right outside our house is different. It is is very white, almost blue light, and almost looks like LED. Then I noticed that several, but not all, of the street lights in the neighborhood have been replaced. It is easy to tell, because the contrast with the old yellowish sodium lights is striking.
I thought a web search was in order to see if this was part of something significant. Sure enough, I found the following information in this PDF:
The City will be replacing all “cobra head” street lights in Albany from High‐pressure sodium vapor (HPSV) to LED. Approximately $400,000 in Federal Stimulus Funds (ARRA funds) for energy efficiency will be utilized for this project. This project has many “green” benefits including:
- CO2 reduction: 170,042 Kg/year
- Energy savings: 324,506 kWh/year
- First Year Cost savings: $28,374
They will be replacing over 600 of the old sodium lights. There’s also a lot said about improved visibility. It definitely seems much brighter out there. I hope it is not too much, since our bedroom window faces the street. On the other hand, I do like the quality of light much better than those terrible orangey sodium-vapor lights. It’ll make mundane neighborhood night photography much more fun.
Brighton Ave, Albany CA, 2010.
Night Rambler 5
It showed up one day earlier this week. It sat quietly over to the side minding its own business, not making a peep. I went by once and noticed it immediately, but I, too, didn’t say anything. Life is like that a lot these days. One makes mental notes and tries to find them later amid the clutter of scraps of paper, children’s toys, empty wine bottles, and job postings.
I went by again and the tug was more insistent; the mental note came floating down from the rafters, landed in plain view. For two days I shuffled it to the top of the stack of other mental notes.
Sarah had noticed it sitting there and said something to me about it. Tuesday night it was still there when I left the house to run the errand in another note. I threw my tripod in the car on my way to get milk.
On the way back home, i went by again. This time I stopped. I didn’t care that it was night. The moon was almost full. The golden convertible gleamed in the cocktail glow of moonlight and sodium vapor.
It was accidental at the time, brought about by the time constraints of modern suburban living. But these two great tastes taste great together: suburban neighborhood car photography, and night photography.
Indulgent Parent or Crafty Photographer?
Caleb, House and Topiary, originally uploaded by neocles.
Saturday was a long day. It started by my rushing around trying to get various domestic chores and to-do’s done before helping good neighbor friends the Fosters with day two of their move to a new place. Dig the topiary.
So after grocery shopping, collecting up mom’s laundry, getting a hair cut, last minute trip to the drug store for more allergy drugs–damn! The decongestant-antihistamine-pain reliever combo drug is TWICE as expensive with real pseudo-ephedrine in it!–I arrived to help with the move. I’m sure glad my neighborly friends and pillars of civic life in Albany, CA found a place in town to hatch the next one, and didn’t have to move to, say, Albany NY. Housing prices have managed to stand pat around here. They say it’s the schools.
Meanwhile, we had strongly intimated to, if not outright promised, Theo that we would go check out the free telescope viewing at Chabot Space and Science Center. Well, by the time the packing, loading, unloading, organizing, pizza, and beer was done and we got home, it was durn near 9 p.m. That’s pretty late for chilluns to be heading out to party.
But a promise is a promise, as we were repeatedly, like a skipping CD, reminded. Indulgent parent that I am, I agreed to take him up there to see what we could see. Theo had a disco nap in the car on the way there, and I had to wake his ass up upon arrival.
It was a good night for viewing. We saw the Beehive Cluster, M3 Globular Cluster, Capella binary star system (I think), and Saturn with four of its moons! Seeing Saturn through a big telescope is pretty awesome. Theo is totally into it; looks like we’ll be coming back often. And since we were going anyway, I took camera and tripod along for the heck of it. Results below.
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