Tag: night

Urban Exoticism

East 59th Street, New York

I had a cousin who was an optician. He offered me an after-school job at his shop. He told me he’d teach me how to work the lens-grinding machine but to be careful lest I fall in and make a spectacle of myself.

Some more urban night shots from the archive.

Click on the images below to see them larger.

Urban Exoticism

Downing & Varick St

I recently entered a competition on “Urban Exoticism.” From my archive I found 76 images I considered candidates, but only 5 could be submitted. Over the next few days I’ll share some of those that didn’t make the cut.

click any image below to see them full size.

Perseid Night

Farnham Park, Surrey

The night the Perseid shower was meant to provide the best seeing here in Southeastern England, we went out to the park around midnight. As we ran out the door, I grabbed a camera with a 55-200mm zoom on it, but no tripod. While the sky was mostly clear and dark, there was a glow on the Eastern horizon which I imagine was from Aldershot. We did see a few brief streaks in the sky and one very bright one. Of course, I didn’t capture any of them but, taking handheld (braced) shots with 4 second exposures at ISO 12,800 I did get some mysterious and eerie night shots of the sky with a handful of blurry stars.

Modern Romance

I had an idea for a series of photos on insomnia. I thought of images of a woman lying in bed, in the dark, unable to sleep, eyes wide open, staring straight up. And I imagined another with a couple lying in bed, each on their own with no connection, both stuck in their own insomniac mental wanderings. Setting it up I would ideally have liked the camera looking straight down at the bed. The best I could manage was an awkwardly contrived tripod with one leg up at about an 80° angle, propped on a suitcase, with the other 2 legs pushed up against the bed. I left the room lights off but allowed street light in through the window behind the camera and room light through the door at the opposite side of the room. I used the Fuji’s base ISO of 160, resulting in exposures ranging between 2½ and 4 seconds, using a remote. Here are a couple more from the shoot, which in the end I decided was more about anomie than insomnia.

Glass

The Lightbox, Woking, UK

On 31st January we held a private viewing of our UCA Photography MFA student work, The Gathering (you can see information about it now on the Exhibitions page). On the way out, in the evening, I stopped to photograph these glass sculptures with variable colored lighting in the entrance park. I couldn’t find any information about them.