Tom Paiva's Night Photography Blog

This blog has turned into sort of a travel blog as of late (which has not been my intention), so I wanted to talk about something more technical, but at the same time show some interesting images, most at twilight and at night.

As most of you know, I shoot a lot of architecture and industrial locations–man-made subjects. Keeping the verticals vertical is a challenge, especially with wide-angle lenses. We call this converging of lines the “keystoning effect”, as it has a wedge-like look to the verticals.

I rented the new Canon 24mm and 17mm tilt shift lenses from Samy’s Camera in Hollywood, with the intention of purchasing one.  Renting to try out expensive lenses like these is a great way to help make your decision.  For those who want to see these lenses with reviews and how they work, click here for the 24mm and here for the 17mm.  I found both lenses to be razor sharp and excellent in build quality and smooth movements–even for the heavily used rental units.

The next three shots are daytime shots, but are a good example of what these lenses can do.  They are the first three shots I made and are all shot from the same spot on the opposite corner.  In this first shot, I photographed the old May Company building at Wilshire Blvd. and Fairfax Ave. (now the offices for the LA County Museum of Art) with my regular 24mm wide angle lens.

Note how the building appears to tilt backwards.  It doesn’t, of course, but it is caused by tilting the camera upwards.

Here is the same image shot with the 24mm tilt shift lens with some rise added.  Note the verticals are vertical (the black ‘wings’ surrounding the gold mosaic rounded corner are, indeed, canted and not vertical).

Here is the same view shot with the 17mm tilt shift lens.

Note the much wider field of view and how I am able to get the top of the flag pole, too.  In this wider view, the palm trees add to the composition.  You can fix this sort of perspective distortion in Photoshop, but the quality of the image is degraded considerably.

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On the grounds of LACMA, I shot the Ahmanson Building and used the Rodin statue of Balzac as the subject.  This is with the 17mm tilt shift lens.

I then shot with the 24mm tilt shift lens and moved back 15 feet.  Notice the less exaggurated lines on the building.  I put a bit of swing in here too and shot wide open at f3.5 to add some interesting focus selection.  Note the very different perspective.

The reason I chose this statue is that it is a duplicate of the same Rodin statue that Steichen shot in the moonlight around 1908 in Paris–the earliest known night image using only moonlight).

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Later that evening I tested the lenses in Culver City where I live, where we have some interesting modern architecture in the Hayden Tract area.  These next two twilight images are where one of my photo labs are.  Note the difference in perspective from the 24mm…

…vs. the 17mm view, below.

Both of these images have the basically same field of view (I moved about 10 feet closer for the 17mm shot).  Which is better is a matter of opinion.

Here is another pair of images with the 24mm…

…and the 17mm, below.

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And finally, another pair shot on the overcast night.  The first is with the 24mm lens,

which I was happy with, but also tried the 17mm lens, below…

…and liked the idea of getting close enough to eliminate much of the parking lot, isolating the structure even further.

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The next day, I used the lenses on a commercial job to shoot a new city hall.

In practice, I found the 17mm lens more versatile, getting shots that are almost impossible to get with any other lens, especially for interiors.

After two days of shooting all sorts of imagery, both day and at night with both lenses, I had made my decision and have purchased the 17mm tilt shift lens.

Due to heavy business traveling over the past month, I am a bit behind on the blog posts. For this post, I will take advantage of a trip I made to South Carolina, Georgia and Florida to visit family and to have a little fun along the way. Using frequent flier mileage took the sting out of that expense.

October is a wonderful time of year to travel most anywhere, as the kiddies are back in school, their parents back to work, and the weather is usually pleasant. The South can have blistering hot and humid weather, not to mention monsoon rains, but on this trip it was mostly in the 70s-80s with just a few days of light rain.

The first night we stayed at a motel on I-95 just outside of Savannah.  It made for a long day, having to get up at 3am that day for a 6am flight connecting through Denver with a 2+ hour layover connecting on to Jacksonville, FL. The frequent flier seats are very limited and the flights available were not the best, but you get what you pay for. Between the flights and driving for several hours, I wanted to get out and shoot at twilight, where I took this shot.

The four parking lot lights criss-crossed over the two bikes and poles, making for some interesting shadows.

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We stayed with my my wife’s cousin, Jimmy in Spartanburg, SC, a quiet, sedate little berg, made famous as the corporate headquarters of Extended Stay America Motels and Denny’s Restaurants (who occupy the tallest skyscraper in town.) Also, all the BMW SUVs sold in the world are made in Spartanburg.

Jimmy’s  house was decorated to the nines with Halloween decorations.  I especially liked this row of illuminated skulls, photographed best at twilight.

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We drove on to Savannah, GA, a beautiful, historic city that really represents the best of the South to me.  We stayed at the River Street Hotel, with a room overlooking the Savannah River.  That put us in the middle of town, with walking access to great restaurants, bars and museums.  The 4 foot square balcony gave me just enough room to set up a tripod to do a time-lapse sequence.  The following is about 500 individual images over a two and a half hour time frame (5AM to 730am) showing night through sunrise.  Watch for all the containership traffic.  I also did a sunset version, but the sky was more interesting in this dawn version, there was more ship traffic and I like all the early morning delivery trucks, too.

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While waiting for a table for dinner that night, I did this shot from the bar with my mini tripod.

The walls are, indeed pink, as this place is the famous Olde Pink House restaurant.  The light is from a multi-faceted light fixture.  The food was fabulous and a reservation is highly suggested for next time.

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While Lee waited for a table (a 45 minute wait, with no reservation), I wanted to take advantage of twilight and the balmy weather, so I explored within a block of the restaurant and shot these images over just a few minutes, during my favorite twilight-time.

This was shot with the camera propped up on a stone wall.  I love the interesting mix of colors in this shot.  Note the Pink House Restaurant on the left.

These are simply down-spouts, but over the top in design.

Here a chained bicycle is lit by the overly bright light over the ATM machine, which I purposely blocked with the “no parking” sign.

Right behind the restaurant is a church, where I wandered up the steps to make this shot, leaning against a railing.  I like the mix of warm tones and cool tones from the sky.

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While in Savannah, we found out that there was a show at the Telfair Museum with 4×5 large format urban night shots.  Being another photographer who appreciates working at night with the big camera, that was a must-see for me.  The photographer is John Dowell who is a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and the show was called “Harmonic Discord”.  I took a couple of clandestine photos in the galleries, but this link will show a couple of cleaner examples, with a bio on him, too.  The work seemed to have a sameness to them and I liked the abstractions better than the large amount of simple, wide night shots of skyscrapers in eastern US cities.

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On our last night in Savannah, I wandered around the hotel and shot some of the old historic buildings along Bay Street.

The buildings along Bay Street and River Street are multi-layered and they have different types of lighting which added to the look and texture that caught my eye.

As you can see from this image, the lower portions are for deliveries and trash pick-up and are lit with cold industrial mercury vapor lamps.  It appears in this image that the famous red Cotton Exchange Building from the 1880s appears to be a facade with no real footing–but it’s not.  Today it’s a restaurant/tavern.

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We drove on to St. Augustine, FL and spent one night to break the long drive and to explore that city’s historic architecture.  While wandering around the Castillo de San Marcos (or as the locals say, ‘The Fort’), I shot these young teens paddle boarding in Halloween costumes in the inland waterway.

I panned the camera during this half second exposure.  When I yelled to them they said they were off to a party.  It was Friday night, after all!

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This is not something I usually do, but here is a self portrait against the fort ramparts.  There was a bright floodlight that threw the shadow.  I had to do several to get the perspective right and to get one sharp enough for the 1/4 second exposure.  It looks acceptable at this size.

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We drove on across Florida visiting junk shops and taking many photos of nearly abandoned, closed down towns.  The economy has really hit some of the smaller, out of the way towns very hard.  Since they are shot during the day, I won’t share them here.

We drove on and visited my dad and his wife in central FL.  On the afternoon we arrived, there was an antique car show in town, so I took advantage to take a few shots.  The sunset and coloring was so intensely magenta-orange, quite different than sunsets here in Southern California.  I did this shot of a rare 1942 Studebaker, as I liked the mixture of the intense green and subtleties of the warm twilight sky.

It was a whirlwind trip, indeed.

Last month my good friend Rob invited me to NYC for a long weekend together and do the tourist bit, along with a jaunt out to Queens were we each lived as kids.  Being August, it was hot, which made for some balmy evenings to shoot.  The evening I arrived, I met with Kay Kenny, an NYU photography professor and good friend (who also teaches night photography) and we took the subway out to Coney Island where we wandered on the boardwalk to do some shooting.

The old parachute jump has been restored but doesn’t operate any longer.  The red light flickered on for a few seconds during this exposure, but we never saw them again.

–Further down the boardwalk, I was fascinated by this old roller rink, now closed.  It has a colorful mid-eastern theme.  I used custom white balance on this shot to neutralize the overpowering orange sodium vapor lamps.  We were one day before the full moon, which is helping to illuminating the sky.

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There was so much to shoot at night at amusement parks like Coney Island.  I made about 50 images in the rides section alone.

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At around 10pm, all of a sudden fireworks started and gave us a 20 minute show.  You would think as a night photographer, fireworks would be a common theme for me, but in reality, I have not shot fireworks in years.  I felt like the City was welcoming me with this show!  It being the weekend, there was lots going on, with families and friends everywhere.  You can see that nearly full moon and the reflection off the water.

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We wandered out on to the sand.  This exposure is 30 seconds, and the “Welcome to the Beach” sign is waving slightly in the breeze.  I like the rim lighting from the moon (hidden behind the sign) on the trash cans.

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Street shooting in the subway is always fun.  Note they guy with a bass fiddle on his back and the people in shorts as it was quite hot that evening.  This was shot from the hip leaning against an I-beam across 4 sets of tracks with a slight telephoto lens on my Sony NEX-5.

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I wandered down the end of the subway station beyond a “No Entry” sign where there was a bare bulb illuminating the catwalk down the subway tunnel.  Using my handy-dandy pocket tripod, and positioning myself to hide the lamp behind some plumbing, where I made this 10 second exposure.  It really shows how old the subways in NYC are.  It was a lot darker than it appears here and it smelled strong of urine.

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I was walking up 6th Avenue hoping to see the Jefferson Market Courthouse, but unfortunately it was tented for a major reconstruction.  The library is still open late where I shot this image in the side staircase.  The play of light and color caught my eye.

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One of the touristy things we did was go to the Top of the Rock there is an observation deck on the 67th floor of Rockefeller Center.  Sure, there were nice images to be had outside, and I made a few, but I was looking for something different where I shot this in the corridor that leads to the roof.  That green “fireworks” above the Empire State Building is a reflection of a light fixture behind me.  The arc is part of the GE logo on the outside of the building.  It is all about finding the right position.

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How can you go to NYC in August and not get rained on?  We did on two nights where it came down in buckets.  Here are a few street shots near Times Square where you can see how hard it rained.  I shot these from sheltered overhangs.

It is difficult to actually photography raindrops, as the light has to hit them just right, which it did in the above shot.

Police are everywhere in the Times Square area to keep an eye on the guys with bags on their heads!  We spoke to one cop who said just the sight of them keep ‘problems’ down.

We were lucky to get a cab back from dinner that night.

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While we were out at dinner, I set up the camera to shoot a three hour time-lapse sequence from one of our rooms that had the best view.  The window opened from the top a few inches, and we had to put the tripod on a table and stack up suitcases to get it to go up to 7 feet.  Notice the fast moving clouds and off-and-on rain that evening.  The flickering lights are spill from all the signage at Times Square.  The view is looking west down 47th Street towards the Hudson River.

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On the last evening, we were talking about how you don’t see any Checker Cabs anymore in NYC.  I told Rob I had not seen one in years on the streets of the City.  A few minutes later, what do we see, but a Checker Marathon cab parked near Grand Central Station!

The guys in the back seat had video cameras, so I think this was some sort of photo shoot.  The car had no license plates, either.

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One of the things I wanted to see on this trip was the Night Vision–Photography After Dark show on the “history” of night photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The Met is always worth visiting, but with a show on night photography, I had to see it.

It covered the early master works including Paul Martin, Alfred Steiglitz, and Brassai, but also had some contemporary photography.  There were about 40 images displayed on dark blue walls, which I thought was effective.  Seeing original prints of images such as Alvin Langdon Coburn’s Broadway at Night and Berenice Abbott’s Nightview, New York is always a pleasure. Back in late 2010 on another trip to NYC, I had seen a major show of Steiglitz’s work at the Seaport Museum, including many of the famous night images.

Important work from photographers such as O. Winston Link were missing, and there also was no color work which was another disappointment.  I also felt the contemporary work was weak and even a bit contrived , such as the aerial photographs of Los Angeles houses spotlighted by a police helicopter.  I had the feeling that the curator simply pulled night images from the Met’s vast collection.

Several New Yorkers warned me that I probably would be disappointed, but it was worth seeing anyway.  The show came down last week.

In early June, I got access to an area near Pier 70 at the Port of San Francisco that has been closed since the 1989 earthquake.  They call this Building #6, which is over 500 feet long, built in 1941 and was used for ship building during WWII.  This area has been constantly broken into by “graffiti artists” over the years who have by now tagged over each others work, especially on the inside of this huge empty structure.  For more info and a map of this area, click here.

While the others shot inside, I was attracted to the adjacent environment of the bay.  again, I shot these in 4×5 with negative film.  It is surprising that the Port has not done anything with this structure and the surrounding area.

Here is a shot of the bay-side of the building in the foggy twilight.  I had to climb on broken sections of roadbed to get to this location and the tripod is on a piece of concrete that is at nearly a 40 degree angle–making it challenging to stand on, too!  The cranes in the background are at SF Drydock, and this building was part of that facility until it was deemed seismically unsound in 1989.  That doesn’t seem to worry the graffiti artists!

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Turning my camera eastward, this massive crane illuminated by a large and bright single lamp on the end of the drydock caught my eye.  In the background are the lights of the Port of Oakland across the bay.  Again, the overcast twilight gives a moody texture to the sky.

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Turning westward (there is still twilight in the western sky when it gets too dark looking eastward), I wanted to show this old abandoned building with the light coming through the myriad of broken windows.  Within minutes, the street and security lamps came on, changing the look considerably.

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It is now nighttime.  The dense overcast makes for a soft light on these rocks, old pilings and an abandoned structure out on a pier.  The pier itself has collapsed in places and you cannot get out there except by boat (even the existing piers look so unstable as you would not want to walk on them).  To get an idea of how dark it was, this is a 15 minute exposure.  The lights of Oakland across the bay are in the background.

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Here is an overall view of Building #6, lit by this lonely street light and spill light from the various industrial areas surrounding this area.  In my younger years, I would have climbed that vertical ladder to the perch on the near edge of the building, but not anymore.  The light on the left is from glow of downtown San Francisco, about 1.5 miles away.

These images were shot within a two hour time frame, and all shot within 100 feet of each other.  There is so much more to do in this area.  It is a pleasure to have access (and not having to sneak in), with the keys and permission to get beyond the locked gates and fences.  Many thanks to Dave and Gerry for access and the fun of shooting with Alan, too.

In continuing with the blog post from a couple of weeks ago on China, I’d like to share some images shot in Nanjing.

After two weeks in Shanghai, we wanted to move on to another location and initially, we had thought about Beijing, but the idea of another huge city sounded like too much for us both, since we only had 6 days left.  We made our decision the day before and chose Nanjing for several reasons; its history as the ancient capital of China; it’s the largest walled city in the world; it has a large system of canals and parks; and was less than two hours by high speed rail from Shanghai.  Another huge plus which we did not know at the time, was that it was 20 degrees cooler than in Shanghai–a welcome respite.

Nanjing is not small, by any means, as its population is nearly 8 million, comparable to New York City, the largest city in the US.  To get a handle on the population of China; the US has 9 cities with over a million while China has over 160 cities with over a million souls.  Like many things about China, these statistics are difficult to comprehend for Americans.

The tree lined city’s historical district were still teaming with people, as this city has visitors from all over the world, but mainly Chinese tourists.  We were told it was a popular getaway location for Shanghainese, especially on weekends.  We arrived on a Thursday, and by the weekend the hotel was full and so were the shopping districts and museums.  American ex-patriots living in Shanghai suggested we stay in a 5-star Chinese hotel for a third the price of a western chain.  The hotel was deluxe in a great location, but we had a hard time finding an English speaker.  We were the only Anglos at the hotel we saw the 6 days we stayed there.

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This twilight image was taken from a sidewalk cafe of one of the hundreds of canal boats.  I was concerned with the major problem of mosquitoes that is common in hot, humid canal areas like this, as I am typically the first to get bitten.  That is one of the common problems of being out at twilight.  There were definitely thousands of mosquitoes, but also hundreds of sparrows darting after them.  Within a few minutes the sparrows changed to bats and there were even more of them than the sparrows zooming within a few feet of us as they feasted on the mosquitoes.  I got only two bites during my entire stay in Nanjing thanks to this balance of the ecosystem.

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These next two images were taken from one of the dozens of bridges over the canals with the aid of a tiny fit-in-your-pocket tripod.  I did several, and these two came out the best with the light trails from the moving boats.

As you can see, the traffic on the canals is quite heavy!  These are 30 second exposures.

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Our hotel was right next to the gateway to the Confucius Temple, and we had a view from the front of the hotel.  The window opened about 6 inches, allowing a tripod and camera to be positioned without shooting through the dirty glass.  Here is a shot of the camera set up, shot from the other opening window.  It is followed by a time lapse I did that evening in the rain.

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It rained off an on during our stay in Nanjing which made for very humid conditions.  This vendor obviously had enough of being cooped up in his stall, and the rest of his family was put to work.  This man really shows how the heat and humidity made for shorter days out and about as it take so much out of you.  Living in Southern California, we are not used to this humidity.  I shot this while leaning against a pole to keep steady.  I had to shoot three to get one sharp enough.  His family was laughing as I shot this.

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One of the highlights of Nanjing was the City Wall, a nearly 16 mile wall around the city (originally 22 miles, built over 600 years ago).  This gives a great perspective of some of the most beautiful parts of the city and some of the poorest, too.  I left one afternoon while Lee was dealing with some “digestive issues” and climbed on to the wall near our hotel.  It is almost 50 foot wide on top and I wound up walking it for hours alone until I found an exit down.  I saw but one couple while walking the wall.  Again, my little tripod and Sony NEX-5 were with me, and afternoon became twilight into darkness.  I was lucky that it stopped raining once I was on the wall.

This shot was done from one of the wall crenelations, which is about 50-60 feet above the streets below.  This is at twilight on a heavy overcast evening overlooking an exclusive area of canals and bridges.  The orange light is from a sodium vapor lamp spilling up into the tree.

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From this twilight shot, you can see a temple and the skyscrapers of downtown in the distance.  In the center is one of many privately owned restaurants.  We stumbled on these when we went into one asking for directions.  There is such a wide range of income distribution in China that the very wealthy can afford to own their own restaurants for entertaining friends and clients that are not open to the public.  This was the first time I had heard of these.

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As you can see, the vantage point of the wall gives one the sense of being a voyeur.  Here a woman sits and watches TV in her simple apartment.  I found a vantage point between the trees and showing a pair of the many high rise apartment buildings in the background.   There is still a touch of light in the overcast twilight.

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Here is another back patio of an apartment lit by the flicker of the TV.  Note the solar hot water heaters on the rooftops.  These are seen most everywhere in China.

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Here is a section of the wall.  Nanjing, then known as Nanking, was brutally attacked by the Japanese in 1937.  They blew up sections of the wall to gain entry.  Over 700,000 were killed over a period of weeks as the army overtook the city.  Known as the “Rape of Nanking”, it was a foreshadowing of the brutality of WWII in the Pacific that was to come.  We visited a newly built museum to the Chinese “holocaust”, that was quite graphic by western standards and left little to the imagination of the horrors committed by the Japanese army.

It is now night time, but the ambient light of the city on the overcast night makes it look like twilight.  The glowing light at the end of the wall is a staircase down to street/canal level.  The exposure is about 15 seconds, shot with the mini tripod sitting on the wall.

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This shot is from the end of the wall where I climbed down to street level.  There is a bright light out of view blocked by a the wall and another light out of view behind the abutment on the lower left.  Finding the right vantage point was the most difficult task, as I had to lean the camera/tripod on the side of the wall.  I like the purple glow on the lower left structure from blue LED lighting.

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One of the niceties of this trip was my decision to upgrade using frequent flier mileage to first class on American Airlines’ new non-stop service from LA to Shanghai.  Other than the fine French champagne and made to order dinners (including “home-made” ice cream made on the aircraft with your choice of toppings!) the amount of space you have allows you to swivel and to fully recline.  The comforts of first class are many but one of the most important is that it makes a 12-13 hour flight seem like a trans-continental 5-6 hour flight in coach.  This is a 6 second exposure taken somewhere over the Pacific with the camera/tripod against the bulkhead at the toilet, while everyone slept.  It was almost totally dark to the naked eye.  My seat was the one in the middle, in row 2.  It was like traveling by jet in 1960, with all the amenities of that very different era.  I did wander back through business class to coach just to see the seating configuration on the Boeing 777 and it was packed back in “steerage” with not a single seat open, and noisy with crying babies–typical coach airline travel in 2011.  After almost three weeks, it felt good to come home.