Stop the presses!
I just got word from the Rocky Mountain School of Photography that the Neon Museum is letting students of our workshop shoot in their Neon Boneyard!!!
This is the ultimate photo opportunity to capture the bygone era of Vegas and one of the few times that they have granted access to photographers at night. The Neon Boneyard has over 150 classic Vegas signs from the 30′s-90′s in their 2 acre lot. Lucky for us the boneyard is not electrified, instead Tim and I will help you hone your light painting skills as we shine a new life into these nostalgic signs.

So if you were on the fence about signing up for Vegas to Zion: Dusk to Dawn, Lady Luck has just shined on you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_Q5PrOnyXs

For those of you who have never had a chance to see my Night Visions talk at B&H’s Event Space – it is has been recorded and you can now watch this 2 hour lecture at your leisure.

B&H also just published a blog I wrote about Star trails vs Celestial skies.

I give a lot of useful information in the video but nothing beats the experience itself.  Taking a workshop and immersing yourself in the night with someone to guide you is the most successful way to improve your photography.  Oftentimes these Night Workshops offer access to a unique locations that would be impossible to get to otherwise.  The fear of security coming down on you or just fumbling around in the dark is taken out of the equation.  Light painting is often practiced so that you can become more comfortable with it as well as knowing when to use flash over flashlights.  Processing techniques are shared and 9 times out of 10 you will walk away with a unique set of images that you can add to your portfolio as well as inspire you to continue create more night visions.

Good friends and fellow nocturnalists Lance Keimig and Scott Martin made a wonderful 6 minute video about night photography and workshops.  Last year I was invited to speak at the Nocturnes 20th anniversary Night Festival in Mono Lake which offers entry to Bodie National Park, the surreal tufa’s of Mono Lake, and Yosemite.

Another popular Night Photography Workshop is Joe and Troy’s junkyard 3 day workshop.  Their spring class is sold out but you can get on their mailing list for future workshops.

There are still a few more spots open for Tim Cooper and my week-long Vegas – Zion night workshop in March.  I wrote about my experience of shooting 7 straight nights a few years ago and with the Vegas lights and Zion nights this is sure to inspire!

I will also be announcing the Bannerman 2012 Night Workshops, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Nights, as well as a new historic NY location that Matt Hill and I will be offering in the Spring and Fall by mid-February.  We are very excited about all these locations so stay tuned for more info soon!

See you when the sun goes down!

Pinhole hunting season is officially afoot! This Sunday, April 24th is World Wide Pinhole Day, so put aside those multicoated glass lenses and step back in time and try one of the oldest forms of photography. See my previous link for an explanation on what a pinhole is and what types of pinhole cameras are out there. You can adapt any digital camera to take a pinhole body cap or lensbaby pinhole/zoneplate but I find the best images come from homemade pinhole boxes or the beautiful Zero Image teak and brass high end cameras. Pinhole Photography will force you to slow down your process and be more reflective. Average exposures during the middle of a sunny day tend to be 8 seconds. If you shoot indoors you are likely to exposure for hours. The below image is a 2 hour exposure taken yesterday. If you can name all 5 cameras in this image I will send you a $50 B&H Gift Card! Leave your guesses in the comments section below.

This will be the 11th year in a row that the world celebrates WWPD. I was surprised to see that there aren’t any scheduled events in NY, so I have decided to host one! Here are the details for the DUMBO Pinhole Walk:

Where: Meet in front of the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory
When: 1pm Sunday April 24th – rain or shine
What you need to bring: Pinhole camera, film or digital capture, and tripod.
I will have extra cameras, film, and light meters if you are new to this and want to try it out, but there will be limited quantities and will go to the first arrivals.

From there we will walk and pinhole around Dumbo and Brooklyn Bridge area. This free pinhole photowalk will go until 5pm and we will end back at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory for a celebratory scoop!

If you are not in the NY area and want to participate check here to see if there are any events near you or host one!

Click here to RSVP, one lucky attendee will win a signed 1st edition of Michelle Bates “Plastic Cameras, Toying with Creativity”

Hope to see you there!

On this night 127 years ago, 14 tons of fireworks, more than 10 thousand pieces, were set off from the Brooklyn Bridge in an outstanding display of pyrotechnics that lasted an hour.  Hundreds of thousands of spectators gathered along the shores of Manhattan and Brooklyn to witness the biggest celebration the cities had ever experienced.

It was the first bridge to cross the strong and swift East River.  And for a time it was known as “The Eighth Wonder of the World” as it towered far above any other building in New York.  It cost just one cent to walk along the Great Bridge’s Promenade and later that year had two streetcars that would carry almost 10 million people across in their first year of service.

The Brooklyn Bridge was officially opened on May 24th 1883.  It was deemed an official holiday known as “The People’s Day” and the president of the United States,  Chester A. Arthur, was one of the first to walk across with the Governor of NY and soon to be next president, Grover Cleveland.
They walked over on, still to this day, the only elevated promenade on a bridge.
150,300 people crossed that first day the New York Brooklyn Bridge was open to the public.

If you have never walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, you are missing one of the most amazing views and feelings a human can have.  I am lucky to bike over this Great Bridge on a weekly basis.  It is like being on the top of the world.  You can see the Statue of Liberty to the left and the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges to your right.  The cityscapes surround you and the cars whiz by without notice below.  You have an unobstructed view of the world, except for the cables which safely envelope you as well as hold the 6,620 tons of weight that is suspended over the East River.

Below is a direct quote by David McCullough, who wrote The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, from Ken Burns America Collection – Brooklyn Bridge:

I feel that the bridge makes one feel better about being alive.
I think it makes you glad that you are part of the human community.
That you are part of a species that could create such a structure.

We are builders and we when see something that we built well, our hats are off!
We stand there and say, “Isn’t it marvelous?”
But isn’t it marvelous that it was built by people, people like you and I.
People like we would like to be, at least.
And brave, courage, the tenacity of those people, the confidence.

All of those are… they sound like platitudes
But they are truths, they are simple truths.
But some truths need repeating generation after generation after generation.
And the Brooklyn Bridge continues to repeat truths that we need to remember.

I highly recommend taking a stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge sometime soon…

Well I hope you polished off your pinholes and had some fun this weekend!  The last Sunday of every April marks World Wide Pinhole Day.  People from all over the world take a step back and use a handmade pinhole camera or converted digital camera to create amazing images.
This year’s online gallery is already starting to populate so check out it out!
My film shots are still waiting to be dropped off at the lab tomorrow, but I did take my Lensbaby ZonePlate/Pinhole lens for a walk with my D700 camera.  In the two shots of the daffodils I wanted to show the difference between the soft focus glow of the zone plate and the soft sharpness of the pinhole.  The beauty of the Lensbaby dual optic is the ease that you can switch between Zone and Pinhole mode.  This $35 optic will definitely make you see in a new way with your Lensbaby.  The Zone Plate is a permanent f/19 and the Pinhole is f/177, both settings make it dim to look through the viewfinder of your SLR camera.  I find it easier to compose by putting my camera in Live View mode, which shows the “live” image on the back of the screen.  In a sunny environment the Zone Plate is easy to compose this way. Take a test shot, if  you like it ~ why not shoot it again with the pinhole setting?  I advise using a tripod if possible.  The Zone Plate is easy to use handheld on a sunny day but the pinhole will have 2-10 second exposures on a bright day.  Remember the Pinhole setting needs about 5 more stops of light to get the equivalent exposure.
Don’t feel like counting the math of 5 stops?  Here is a little reciprocity math trick:
I call it the Six Stop Rule:
If your Zone Plate Exposure equals 1/10 of a second exposure
Change your Pinhole to a 10 second exposure, which would be 6 stops difference, then half that number (subtract a stop) which would be 5 seconds and the equivalent of 5 stops.

Let’s try it again:
Zoneplate Exposure equals 10 seconds.  To add each stop of light you need to multiply by 2.
20 seconds = 1 stop
40 seconds = 2 stops
80 seconds = 3 stops
160 seconds = 4 stops
320 seconds = 5 stops
320 seconds = 5 1/2 minutes.  The difference between 5 and 5.5 minutes at such a long exposure is negligible.

You can use the “Six Stop Rule” easily to compute the switch from zone plate to pinhole with the Lensbaby optic.
Tens of seconds = Seconds (minus a stop) – 1/8 second = 4 seconds
Seconds = Minutes (minus a stop) – 15 seconds = 7.5 minutes
Minutes = Hours (minus a stop) – 2 minutes = 1 hour

I’ll be teaching more about the Fine Art of the Long Exposure at a FREE seminar at B&H Photo on May 27th from 11am-1pm.  Feel free to bring by any pinhole or night images for feedback, and if you shot any pinhole on World Wide Pinhole Day, upload them to their site!

Hope to see you there.

The whole experience focused my body of work even more, I hope to have a portfolio section updated on my website with a selection of the work that was featured as well as a book in the near future.

For those of you who were not able to attend last month’s opening we did set up a time lapse capture of the space.  I put it together as a movie that shows the comings and goings of all the people with a little surprise at the end!
(it’s high def, so you might want to let it preload before playing)

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMDZ3YO5G1g

Due to the blizzard-like conditions we are experiencing in NYC we are postponing the opening of my solo show at John Allan’s. The new date will be in two weeks, February 24th, so mark your calendars!
In the meantime, go out and take some pictures or play in the snow!

Last night I was amazed as I printed out last week’s Photo of the Week and the image quality was so much better than what I saw on the screen. It’s great that we can share images and ideas via blogs, FB, Flickr, etc but to me, nothing beats the image on the wall.
So in this every changing digital world, don’t forget to print. Make a permanent piece of your history to pass along.

Looking for more inspiration and access to one of the coolest locations to capture images of Lost Americana?
Joe and Troy have a few spots open to their Pearsonville Junkyard Workshops in March and April. I took this workshop last year and had an amazing time, plus I significantly built up my night photography portfolio. You have 3 full moon nights of access to amazing old cars from the 1930′s-70′s, within the backdrop of the Mojave Desert mountains. My light painting techniques became much more refined as Joe and Troy shared their knowledge and took a lot of the guesswork out of using flashes and flashlights in night photography. Check out my previous blog and images from last year.
For more information and to see Troy and Joe’s amazing images check out the Pearsonville Junkyard Night Photography/Light Painting Workshops.

I’ll be celebrating in New Orleans, where the above image was taken on a recent trip.

Looking back on 2009, I realized it was a very prolific year for me. My Fine Art of the Long Exposure lecture became a staple presentation at the B&H Event Space. 60+ people would attend these bimonthly talks on how to create long exposures during the day and night.
I’ll actually be kicking off 2010 with this program at the Brooklyn Camera Club on January 8th and the B&H Event Space on the 12th.

I was also very proud to have my first NYC solo show, Time Exposed, tour John Allan’s Tribeca and Saks’ clubs. I just updated and added 10 more images to the show and moved it to their flagship club in Midtown Manhattan. I’m working on the details of an opening in February so stay tuned!

There are a few spots left for my Night Photography Workshop in Pittsburgh on January 30th-31st. I’m excited to explore the Three River Bridges and North Park area with the students. We’ll look at how to overcome the challenges of night cityscapes, shooting in contrasty scenarios and mixed lighting situations. The second night will be an exploration in longer exposures and star trails as we shoot in Pittsburgh old North Park which combines some great architectural park buildings with the diversity of the park itself.

Finally this was the year Gabriel turned digital. I thought I was going to be the last one standing, but I purchased the Nikon d700 back in July and haven’t shot a roll of film since. Not to say I won’t, I just wanted to fully immerse myself in the digital capture world. I don’t want to turn this into a film vs digital debate, it should always be about the image. I still see the use of Medium and Large Format film cameras to create images unique images. The slowing down and not seeing instant results can be a liberating experience instead of the rapid capture of digital.

So tonight, have fun cavorting under the blue moon, and I wish you a very successful and creative 2010!