Tom Paiva's Night Photography Blog

For much of July, I was in China for the opening of the show of my work on the Bay Bridge construction project.  The images chosen were from my series shot back in 2009 on that trip to Shanghai.

For this post, I’d like to share some of the twilight and night images shot while I was there.

We arrived around 9pm local time, so we missed twilight.  We took the MagLev (MAGnetic LEVitation) high speed train into town that takes you the nearly 20 miles in just 7 minutes.  Here is a shot of the exterior of the Shanghai city station.  All these images were shot with my Sony NEX-5, an ideal travel camera.  I have a pretty steady hand to make this 1/4 second exposure.

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Shanghai is a thoroughly modern city, casting off the past at a furious pace.  The auto traffic was noticeably worse since my 2009 trip.  Here we are in a Volkswagen taxi (almost every taxi in this city of 28 million is a VW) crawling through the Bund Tunnel at night under the Huangpu River from Pudong to the Puxi side of town.  There was insipid TV, cartoons and videos to watch, but I quickly learned how to turn them off.

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One night we went out to see the Chinese Acrobat show (which was much better than I expected) and saw this interesting building next to the theater.  China has a unique sense of architecture, to say the least, and this building, housing a restaurant and shops seemed over the top for what it was.

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We stayed for a few days with American friends who have been living in Shanghai for about 18 months, which gave us valuable insight into daily life there, from an ex-pat’s view.  Let’s just say there are good and bad points!  Here is a twilight shot (using a mini tripod against a wall) from the open kitchen window (from the 25th floor) looking at some of the many high rises in Shanghai.  The overcast and smog are evident in this view.  The trees around their complex made for pleasant walks, as they included ponds and small bridges.  Mosquitos are a big problem in this city, and I always seem to attract them, but we learned that they rarely fly higher than 20 floors, so they were able to leave the windows and balcony doors wide open.  In July, though, the heat was too intense (hitting 100 with 90% humidity) that air conditioning was in order.

I did several time lapse sequences from their place and from hotel windows, and here is a two hour sequence compressed to a 30 second video.  It is shot from Clare and Richard’s guest room balcony where we stayed on the 25th floor overlooking Shimen and Beijing Roads.  The smog and overcast limits the views of the Pudong skyline, but you can barely see them on the left.

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Shanghai, especially the Puxi side, is based on a complex network of a very old road system.  Walking the back alleys is an experience in itself, but you certainly would not want to drive there, with the aggressive drivers and brutal liability issues.  Subways are fast and efficient, and we took them when going long distances across town, but for Westerners, cabs are the way to go.  In the city, they typically cost between $1 and $4 per ride.  You must have the destination written in Chinese, as very few taxi drivers speak or read anything else.  In this shot, I held my breath and did this hand-held 1/2 second exposure, as we got out of the cab to dinner.  This is one of the more pleasant areas of town in the French Concession.

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In celebration of my first international show, I stayed with the Bay Bridge VIPs at the famed Peace Hotel, built in 1929, and recently restored to its former elegance.  It is right on the Bund, across from the famed views of the skyscrapers on the Pudong side of Shanghai.  In this twilight shot, we see a massive statue of Chairman Mao, ironically, as if looking over the rampant capitalism now going on in China [correction: this is not Mao, but Chen Yi, Shanghai’s first Communist mayor–thank you Jean Loh from Shanghai for pointing this out].  This is right in front of the Peace Hotel and the Shanghai Oriental Pearl or TV Tower is in the background, across the river.

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In these next three shots along the Bund, you can see the throngs of people that come here in the busy summer season.  It was around 90F degrees in the evenings.  We met several young people eager to talk with us who were from remote sections of central and western China visiting Shanghai for the first time.  Some even requested to have photos taken with us.  There is a tremendous pride by the average Chinese for the transformation of Shanghai into an international city. These shots were taken with the aid of a $2 mini tripod on the edge of the railing or against a pole.  Who says camera gear has to be expensive!

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The Peace Hotel is on the left with the green copper roof.  You could hardly ask for a better location.

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Another hotel, just down the street was the Shanghai Waldorf Astoria.  The famed Long Bar (built in 1911, celebrating its 100th anniversary) made some excellent cocktails which we enjoyed in the early evening.  Here is a view of the mezzanine above the bar with twilight coming through the skylight.

Here is a lower lobby view.

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And a pair of perfectly made cocktails in the Long Bar with that wonderful blue of twilight spilling in from the window.

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One evening on a stroll near the hotel, I stumbled on a fellow night photographer, a Chinese man with his camera and tripod taking some long exposures.  I tried to talk with him, but he spoke no English and I no Chinese.  He seemed a bit nervous, and quickly moved on.  I did a quick snapshot of him while leaning on a parked car.  It seems night shooters are everywhere nowadays.

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Late one night, I stopped to watch this group of men installing flower pots on every street lamp along the Bund.  They were working so quickly and efficiently going from pole to pole.  The next morning, hundreds were in place were there were none the day before, yet no one seemed to notice.

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Shanghai is an energetic, exploding city, so much that the government has to regulate incoming migration.  It also limits the number of cars and the issuance of driver’s licenses (which can cost thousands of dollars), and yet, General Motors Buick division sells more cars in China than they do in the US.

We were hard pressed to find signs of the old and historic, as buildings are being knocked down at a frightening pace.  I did wander into abandoned 18th and 19th century structures slated for demolition with wonderful details and patina, now occupied by squatters.  In China, all buildings are “deconstructed” and virtually all the materials are reused or recycled.  It was fascinating to watch crews of people pulling nails out of lumber and plywood and loading the wood onto waiting trucks.  There are pickers on trikes all over town that collect wood, metal, plastic and even styrofoam for recycling.  They have local processing centers all over the city that buys the material.  This makes Shanghai one of the “greenest” cities on earth.

The fashions in Shanghai are all western-casual, and it was rare to see anyone dressed in traditional Chinese garb (and then only the very old).  I first went to China in 1983, and it was so very different then, more like a third-world country.  Those days are past as China catapults into the 21st century, destined to be the largest economy in the world by the end of the decade.

After two weeks in Shanghai, we took the train on to Nanjing, where I will share some images and talk about that fascinating city in the next blog post.

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Also, I wanted to mention while I was in China, about the passing of Per Volquartz, who died in mid-July.  We had just shared emails with him on China the week before I left,  talking about contacts and ideas, as he was well loved in China.  It is a big loss of this great photographer and artist, and he will be greatly missed.  I was fortunate to get home in time to go to the memorial, where I saw many old friends and also met many new ones.  Goodbye, Per, and thanks for all you have given to the photographic community.

This week, I just got back from a whirlwind trip for the show opening in Shanghai, China, and am still working on processing the imagery from the nearly three week trip.  The next post will have some images from China, but in the mean time, I’d like to share some images shot in rural Nevada as I left the Mono Lake Night Photography Festival a few weeks ago.

As I drove out of Lee Vining and Mono Lake, I headed east to Hawthorne, NV, about a 50 mile drive.  Although this is a blog for twilight and night photography, I wanted to share a pleasing image shot on highway 167 a few miles out of Hawthorne that made it worthwhile bringing out the 4×5 camera.   The high desert was in full bloom and stretched for miles!  It is so rare to stumble on the desert in bloom, as it only lasts a couple of days.  It is always a sight to behold and appreciate.  It is hard to tell here, but there are several types of flowers blooming and they stretch in patches to the distant mountains.

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The remote town of Hawthorne has about 3000 hearty souls and is is a quirky one, as the main reason for its existence is the naval ordinance depot–at least 200 rugged miles from the nearest navy.  Of course they have a casino and numerous motels.  One of the highlights of town was the Hawthorne Naval Ordinance Museum where I photographed the many bizarre details.  It was free and filled with all sorts of bombs and torpedoes.  Strange, indeed.

I headed south on highway 95, one of the major highways in Nevada and stumbled on an abandoned factory between the towns of Kincaid and Luning.  It was about 100 feet from the highway and wide open.  It was now the home to a few pigeons, trying to stay cool in the 100 degree heat.  I wandered through the buildings with a flashlight and was surprised on how intact it was.  Since I live in a major city (L.A.), I am used to seeing places like this, but they are always locked and boarded up, and they get covered with graffiti very quickly.  This place had no graffiti whatsoever and the only vandalism I saw was a couple of broken windows.  What a nice change!  It must have been closed for several years, by the ‘patina’ on everything.  Since it was dark inside, and required a tripod and long exposures, I feel that this qualifies as “low-light shooting”.  Again, after scouting, I felt it deserved the 4×5 camera.

There was a brown stain on the whole interior of the building.  It must have been a processing facility for some sort of mineral.  I did see a stack of bags in one room, but the labels were too badly faded.  The cyan color is from daylight spilling in on these long exposures.

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I could not figure out what these slats were for, but they do give a nice texture.  I like the mix of cool and warm tones.  There were several dead birds on the floor, dessicated in the desert heat.

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In the lower floor there was this workbench and rolls of cardboard packing material covered with the desert dust.  Finding the right position for the camera/tripod was the challenge here, as this is a very confined space.  It was quite dark in here as this is a two minute exposure.

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I’ve included this exterior daytime shot to show how unmolested the buildings are.  This is one of three structures and I waited until I after I did the interior shots for the sun to move onto the side of the building with the shadows from the pipes.

I don’t know if this place is a victim of the economy or part of the boom/bust cycle that is Nevada.  Las Vegas makes the news with their hard times, but I feel the small communities are hit worse with utter economic devastation.  One night on this trip I stayed with an old buddy who lives in Reno and he told me of the major problems with that town.  In the rural areas I saw several towns that were totally shut down–the store, the eateries, the motels and gas stations were all boarded up.  These are the modern day Bodie-like ghost towns.  I wish I could have spent more time in this part of the country, but responsibilities were awaiting back home.

In the last blog post, I showed three images from Bodie that were taken late in the evening (after 10pm)—out of the five set ups I shot. The reason for doing so few views was that the digital camera was busy from twilight until almost 10 pm that evening doing a time-lapse sequence. Here is a video version made from the approximately 400 individual images looking south on Green Street.

View this at full size, and you can see all the different night photographers popping flash strobes and using flashlights to paint with light like I did with the “Coffin” shot in the last blog post.  The images were shot 20 seconds apart and are being viewed at 12 images per second.  It is ironic that a park ranger picked this evening to move into his new digs (hence the U-Haul trailer).  At the time, it looked like he was ruining the shot, but actually, it adds interest and gives more to observe (as he unloads the trailer).  You can watch the full moon rise and the light change from twilight through the “blue hour” to darkness and see the shadows and stars move with the moon.  If you look closely, you can see the space station quickly arc across the sky.

The guy with the silver “bag” over his head in the early frames is me making one of my 4×5 views while the digital camera was doing its thing.   I did five twilight/night views with the 4×5 that evening and here are four of them.

The immensity of this generator intrigued me as it was about 8 feet high.  The contrast of the weathered buildings behind with the bright light of the setting sun behind me reflecting off the window adds interest.  For those in the know, I swung the front standard of the 4×5 to keep things in focus. The rising full moon with the afterglow of sunset gives a bit of warmth to this image.   Even this time of year (the summer solstice full moon), the bleakness of the area and chill at night makes you appreciate the ruggedness of the people who lived here.

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Here we have a classic Bodie view that shows the weathered texture of the 1880s ghost town.  Twilight really saturates the subtle colors.  It is darker than this image tells us, as this is a one minute exposure.  It is probably difficult to tell, but there is a subtle purple-pink color in the twilight sky.  Yes, those are patches of snow (in mid-June) in the background, as Bodie is over 8000 feet in elevation.

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Being the urban guy, I was attracted to one of the few lights (from a park ranger’s quarters) in this “ghost town” as it adds life to the bleak deep blue darkness.  If you cover up the lit window with your hand, you can see this would be a much weaker image. This is a 10 minute exposure at the tail end of the fading light.  There was an intense blue light at the beginning and it was totally dark by the end of the exposure.  That blue intensity adds to that late evening feeling.  If you look closely, you can see a red glow on the weathered wood on the far left from the lit window.  This is the shot I was making during the time-lapse video.

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In the last blog, I did a shot of the coffin through this window with the digital camera, painting with light from the side windows on either side (see it here).  After doing that shot, I decided to do one more 4×5 view.  Another night shooter, Chip, was shooting close-in from the window on the right.  Using my best “night photography group etiquette,” I cropped tightly, as not to bother, or see him or his camera (and to stay out of the way of his exposure, too).  The lens was covered during his painting with light.  The light on the coffin was guessed with the help of ‘chimp’ screen from the digital view made earlier.  I figured about 20-30 minutes were needed to try and get some detail on the window frame from from the full moon spill (this side of the building was in deep shadow from the moonlight).  It ended up being a 25 minute exposure.

What I really like about this shot is the rich tones and textures which I hope you can see on your monitor.  The mystery of this image draws you in to see deep inside the funeral parlor.  There is a lot of subtle detail in this image.  The blue tones on the wooden window frame and caulking were more colorful than expected but really added to the mood and contrast.  Very little Photoshop work was done on this image other than basic color balance and density correction.  This is so different from the digital image and is a good case on why I still shoot film—for that unexpected “different” look.

This post has gone live a bit early, because I leave Saturday for the show opening in Shanghai, China, and will be gone for almost three weeks.  I won’t be doing a blog post until I return, but will be checking email, so comments are always welcome.  When I get back I’m sure there will be many interesting experiences to share…

Last week Lance Keimig, along with Scott Martin and Tim Baskerville held a Night Photography Festival at Mono Lake, CA in honor of the Nocturnes 20th anniversary.  It was a big success with warm balmy weather, making the night shooting that much more pleasant.  There was even an evening at Bodie, the California State Park ‘ghost town’.

There were 10 guest lecturers including Russel Brown from Adobe with all his great tips on processing night images in Photoshop.  My contributing lecture was talking about the how and why of using the large format camera at night.

The film I shot came out well, but I have not had time to scan it yet, so will share with you a few of the digital images I shot over two nights.

Andy Frazer, Jill Waterman and I drove up highway 120 towards the Yosemite entrance at nearly 10,000 feet (3000+ meters) in elevation.  Tioga Pass was still closed from the heavy winter due to snow and possible avalanches.  This shot is one of the semi-frozen lakes.  The reflection off the water is moonlight in this 8 minute exposure.  We scouted this location in the daytime and the temperature was in the mid-70s, but at night it dipped into the low 30s.  The lakes were melting quickly, as the night shots showed much more water than the day versions.

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We were shooting about a quarter of a mile from where the road was closed, and just before this exposure was done, we all were surprised when a car came down from the pass.  I ran to the camera and stopped the exposure as it approached.  The headlights reflecting off the roadway and reflecting off the water running off the rocks on the right gave this image interest.  Without the car, this image would be weaker, but at the time, I thought he was ruining it!

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The following night, much of the group went to Bodie, one of the highlights of the festival. In this shot of a store, there were two very dim lights (maybe a few watts) hanging inside.  I positioned myself to hide one of them behind the post on the right.  I know this image would loose something in the dark back of the room, so I painted with light with an LED flashlight through a rear window on the left for about 90 seconds on this 4 minute exposure.  I feel the blue light adds a bit of “life” to the image and balances the warm glow in the interior.

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This is the side window of the funeral parlor at Bodie.  You could see the coffin inside, but it needed some light.  I went on either end of the building and painted with light for about 90 seconds on the left and an additional 30 seconds from the right to give the “modeling” effect on the coffin.  This side of the building was in deep shadow, so the exposure was 10 minutes to give some texture.  If you look closely, you can see the reflections of the other buildings in the windows lit by moonlight.  I carefully placed my camera in front of the wooden section between them so it would not show.

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Virtually all of the buildings in town were dark, only lit by moonlight.  One exception was Bodie’s museum.  I am attracted to artificial light and how it interacts with the night scene.  If there was no light on this building, I wouldn’t have shot it, as there are dozens of buildings with no lights.  There was a lone light bulb over the door, giving some great contrast and texture of the false-front 1880s building, but very bright compared to the moonlight.  This is a combination of two exposures combined in Photoshop with masking to retain the detail on the door while still showing the night sky and moonlit background.

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At this point, it was pushing 1:00am, our time to pack it in, as the ranger wanted to go home.  The museum building held my interest, and I did this more abstract image of the false-front lit by the spill light from the bare bulb over the door.  The warm glow contrasts with the moonlit night sky and star trails in this 6  minute exposure.

There were many images to be made in Bodie at night, but time was limited to about 4 1/2 hours, and we each had to work around the other 25 people and their tripods, flashes and flashlights.  There is a certain etiquette when shooting as a group at night, and most everyone respected each other’s space.

The workshop environment is one that educates, inspires and motivates, and this festival was no different.  I’m sure there were many good images made this week.

On the last blog post, I mentioned up-coming workshops, and forgot to mention the San Francisco workshop I will be doing with Tim Baskerville on September 9-11.  For more information, see the website or contact me via email.