When I was first getting into photography I was told that the easiest way to improve your images was to shoot during the magic hours, usually one hour before sunrise and one hour after sunset. For some crazy reason I chose the early morning hours to shoot. I was immediately impressed by the soft quality of light in which to work with but early mornings are really not my forte. I’m more of a late night guy and soon afterward a body of work began to emerge from this nocturnal shooting.
The magic hour of civil twilight, or the blue hour, has neither full daylight or complete darkness. It is one of my favorite times, whether I have a camera or not. The quality of light is amazing as the cobalt blue sky can quickly change to deeper shades of blue until complete darkeness.
How long this civil twilight lasts all depends on your longitude and what time of year it is. Twilight can last 15-20 minutes near the equator or several hours when you get closer to the poles. When I was in Alaska in the summertime, I remember twilight lasting until 2am.

In Brooklyn the civil twilight has been about 45 minutes lately. Luckily the other day I exited the subway just in time for a true magic hour moment.
The top image reminds me of something Brassai might have shot during his nocturnal adventures in Paris during the 1930s.
When I imported the images into Lightroom, my preferred program to process digital files, I converted the above image to black and white to create more of a dramatic look.  However I missed the twilight blue sky, so I started toning selenium and mixing the blues back.
I really like the end result. I’ve included another version of “Twilight Stop” that was not converted to black and white.
Which do you prefer?

For more info on the making the most of the magic hour check out Tim Cooper’s new DVD Magic Light – The Landscaper Photographer’s Guide.

Sugimoto explains: “I’m a habitual self-interlocutor. Around the time I started photographing at the Natural History Museum, one evening I had a near-hallucinatory vision. The question-and-answer session that led up to this vision went something like this: Suppose you shoot a
whole movie in a single frame? And the answer: You get a shining screen. Immediately I sprang into action, experimenting toward realizing this vision. Dressed up as a tourist, I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera. As soon as the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture, and two hours later when the movie finished, I clicked the shutter closed. That evening, I developed the film, and the vision exploded behind my eyes.”

At the time Radio City Music Hall was the only image of his hanging at the Fraenkel. But his series on Theaters lasted from 1975-2001 and took a nice turn when he incorporated Drive-Ins.

Let’s just step back and think about this for a moment. Large format camera, probably an 8×10, that he exposes for the entirety of the movie; capturing all the millions of film images on his single frame. The essence of the movie is white light which is time itself exposed.

With Drive-Ins and classic movie houses all but extinct in America, these images truly capture the spirit of a fading era. It is as if the white screen is revealing all the movies and memories the theater has experienced. The Drive-In shots added extra depth to time-exposed as airplanes and star trails would permanently incorporate themselves to the image.

When I found myself in Scottsdale, Arizona with a free night, I remembered the last time I was here I went to the Drive-In. A quick check on the web revealed the Scottsdale 6 was still in existence! It featured not one, but 6 different screens to choose from and is open year round. I packed two tripods and cameras, one film and one digital, to see what I could capture. It was jam packed at the Scottsdale 6 on a Saturday night, at least 50 cars at each screen. We eased our way to the middle of the Shutter Island screen, second row. I set up both tripods low and directly in front of the car so as not to interfere with anyone else’s vision. A truck load of teenagers next to us must have thought I was recording a boot leg version! I set up my Mamiya 7 to expose for the entirety of the film but came to the conclusion that digital capture would really max out with a 30 minute exposure. Add 30 minutes of in-camera noise reduction which gave me two shots to make some magic happen.

You can see the airplanes come and go, or circle around on the right; star trails shoot straight up on the left. Why is there one person, yet three cars? Cars were turning on and off to recharge their batteries throughout the film and their headlights briefly lit up the foreground giving more depth to the image.

It was very exciting to capture this amount of time in one exposure. Often with long exposures and night photography, the camera will reveal much more than our eyes can see.
It is this unexpected certainty of knowing some of what will happen during the exposure- but how much of it can we control?

Let go, and let the visions explode behind your eyes.

If you are in Las Vegas and want a landscape that is far more impressive then the manscape called Las Vegas Boulevard, I highly recommend a trip out to the Valley of Fire.

Less then an hour northeast of Vegas, past the quickly depleting Lake Meade, you’ll find Nevada’s oldest state park.  “Valley of Fire derives its name from red sandstone formations, formed from great shifting sand dunes during the age of dinosaurs, 150 million years ago.” Not only have the dinosaurs lived here but the Basket Maker people and the Anasazi Pueblo farmers have also passed through leaving their mark on Atlatl Rock.
The dramatic red rock surrealistscape makes you feel like you are landing on Mars.  No wonder it has been a popular location to shoot many movies, including Total Recall’s Mars.  So with an extra night in Vegas I loaded up the minivan with a group of friends and photographers and we headed out for a sunset/nightshoot.
The plan was to meet dear friend and wedding/fine art photographer David Ziser and his wife Ladawn somewhere in the park.  I’ve toured and worked with the Zisers for several years, but was really looking forward to actually shooting with them!  David just released his first book, Captured by the Light:   The Essential Guide to Creating Extraordinary Wedding Photography, which is quickly climbing the charts of Amazon’s top selling Photo books!
Well, 15 miles before we reached the park we quickly learnt that there is no cell phone reception in Mars.  Luckily the park if fairly small with the main Valley of Fire road connecting the East and West entrances of the park.  And surprisingly within 20 minutes we ran into each other chasing after the last licks of magic hour light.  Click on the wonderful group shot taken by Matt Hill to see who all the players are.
In order to photograph in the Valley of Fire at night you need to have a camp site.  So with the twilight hour now behind us, we headed out to the Arch Rock Campground that we had scouted earlier.  Zoobroker got right to work seasoning up the meat and firing up the grill.  Matt, Sylvester, and I set up our tripods and started popping red gel’d flashes as we went from chasing the light to chasing the stars.
Sebastian in the sky was a 6 minute exposure and then I pulled back to get more of a feeling of the whole campsite.  It was packed, we were lucky enough to get one of the last spots that was right in the front of the entrance.
We definitely felt that we were in the Valley of the Gods.
Thanks to Zoo that was the best camp meal I’ve ever had, pork loin and home-made cheese stakes!
Sorry, no pictures, it was quickly devoured by all of us in record time!
Most of the images you see here were shot at a lower ISO, but the “Elephant Eye” photo at the bottom was shot at 6400 ISO to capture what the night sky actually looked like.  Obviously we were far away from any city lights and the sliver of a moon had not risen yet which meant plenty of stars in the sky.  By keeping your exposures under 30 seconds you’ll get more of the celestial feel of the night which can be just as beautiful as those long star trails.
Sylvester, who I quickly learnt is prone to dancing with fire, was the next subject of our shoot.  The difference between the two photographs is what happens when you twirl light in a continuous pattern as opposed to a chaotic pattern.
Which one do you like more?
Remember any light that is in the frame of your photograph, whether coming from a flash, flashlight, or flame will be permanently exposed in your image.  Sylvester spun the light for approximately 30 seconds and then I popped a red gel’d SB900 on the rocks about 5-8 times at full power to enhance the red rock.  I needed to walk into the image during the exposure in order to get close enough for the flash to “read red” on the rock.
Why is it that you don’t see me in the image?  I was blocking the light, not getting hit by it directly, and I was never in the same place for more than a few seconds during these 8 minute exposures.
I did slip up once in the image Inside the Beehive #2, but luckily it perfectly matches up with some of Sylvester’s sparks.
In the last shot of the night I wanted to go long and get a more atmospheric shot of the Beehive.  I set up for a 15 minute exposure and popped the red gel’d flash at 1/2 power 4 times about 8 feet away and at an angle to add depth to the rock.  This ended up being my favorite shot of the night, though I really liked all the ones you see selected here.
Matt Hill also got some killer shots that you can see in his 3-part blog titled Valley of Fire.

Next up…Night exposures at the Drive-In Theater

Is it really April already? I finally have time to post pictures of some amazing adventures that have happened this last month!
February ended with a blizzard and visit from my sister and nephews. On their first trip to NY they did the mandatory “Gabe tour” of walking the Brooklyn Bridge and Museum hopping. So this time I had to come up with a new itinerary. I just finished reading Metropolis, which is a very engrossing historical fiction account of NYC during the 1860′s. The author’s main character is the city itself and two aspects that she goes in-depth about is the building of the Brooklyn Bridge as well as the construction and maintenance of the sewer system. The highs and lows of the city are mirrored with many of the other “Gangs of New York” type characters throughout the book. So this got me to thinking about how New York is such an incredible infrastructure city. My nephews would be fine and dandy just riding the subway their whole time. Sorry, New Hampshire barely has buses, so when I took them to the NY Transit Museum which incorporates the old Court Street station, they were thrilled! The boys weren’t too interested in the history of the sandhogs and the work that went into creating the first underground subway system in the United States. However when they realized that they had complete access to all the subway cars from the 1930′s-80′s,  I didn’t think we were ever going to leave!  The subway museum was one of the first places I visited when I moved here 9 years ago and I highly recommend it for learning more about what makes New York so NY.
So what next? Take them to the Empire State Building? I remembered my good friend and fellow Photo of the Weeker, Brandon, taking some amazing shots of NYC from the top of the Rockefeller Building. What was so great about being on top of the rock is you are able to see the Empire State in all of its glory, which is much better then being on it! So 70 stories into the sky and we arrived at the Top of the Rock! A little snow was in the air and had put a brilliant light white coat over the city.
Click.
The next week it was off to Vegas. I go there for business a few times a year and as I am not a gambler the Vegas shine has worn off. However, one of my favorite things to do in Vegas is put a Lensbaby on my camera and go shooting around Fremont Street in Old Town. The more nostalgic neon signs are a perfect match for the creative focus you can attain with the Lensbaby.

Next up ~ Valley of Fire…

Had a quick stopover in Portland last week to visit an old friend, Angus.  Plenty of bridges to document my ongoing Bridge Project, but it was this image of St Johns Watertower that won my photo of the week!
Ironically, this is the 2nd time that this watertower has won!  The last time it was captured via a pinhole camera.  This time I thought I would take “a shot in the dark!”

The wide tower is truly part of the neighborhood, it is approachable from all directions, and has no gate to keep people out.  All are welcome to take in this unique view of an urban park.  How often do you get to gather under a water tower?  Most are 10-20 stories high in the sky with security fences surrounding them.

The tower was built in 1953 by the Pittsburgh-Des Moines Steel companies and holds over 150,000 gallons of water.  And it has a twin, St Johns is actually home to two of these unique watertowers.
So next time you are in Portland, get a different perspective from under the watertower!

What to do in Reno for fun?

First off, I’m sorry.

You can go check out the strip which is like old old old town Vegas, with many of those shuttered $39.95 Neon Hotels no longer flickering. However with Northern Nevada having the largest Basque population in the United States, I highly recommend taking in some delicious Basque food. We had an amazing 5 course meal at Louis’ Basque Corner just off the strip and the double cut lamb chops at the Santa Fe Hotel look scrumdiddlyumptious as well.
After that, I recommend getting out of town. Take Pyramid Way for 30 minutes north and you’ll come to Pyramid Lake. I had been to Pyramid Lake once before, on my way to the Playa for a pre-Burning Man festival. I remember walking along the lake and I getting some great surrealscape shots. The lake is surrounded by mountains and has many tufa formations in and around the lake that enhance the primordial landscape.

Pyramid Lake will probably become a more sought after destination once Apple’s iPad starts shipping in late March. The screensaver on the iPad is a night shot taken on an 8×10 camera in 2004 by Richard Misrach.  I can see it now, Apple will inspire the masses to dust off their 8×10 cameras and flock west. The next time you go to Pyramid Lake, good luck, there will probably be a wall of tripods that you will have to contend with to get your shot!

Now, I like to stay a little ahead of the game. So when I asked for the map of Reno at the rental car office, I had to smile at my luck as to how close Pyramid Lake was to Reno!  The next night a group of us headed out. I can’t really tell you much about the drive through the desert to the lake, except that it was really dark. With only a crescent moon lighting the way high ISOs or real long exposures were going to be the only option.
As we struggled in the dark to find a shooting location we finally stumbled across a marina in Sutcliffe, which ironically looked like a similar location to where Richard Misrach took his photograph. My high ISO test shot didn’t reveal anything good on the back of screen until 30 seconds at 2.8. Normally I like to shoot in the 6-8 minute time zone, but with the star trails circling and reflecting in the lake I definitely wanting to take it a little more extreme. The final product was a 20 minute exposure at f4 and ISO 500 with noise reduction on, which meant I had to wait 40 minutes to see the image! I think it was worth the wait, and what really surprises me about the images is the different colors in the star trails. I have never seen orange and blue star trails before and if anyone can explain it please share. We were all awestruck with the amount of stars that could be viewed. I fired off one more image below that was four minutes long and captures more of that celestial feeling that we got standing at edge of time as the stars shone all around us.

UPDATED ~ From Lance Keimig, night photographer pioneer and educator.

Gabriel- The colors in the stars have to do with their chemical composition and age. The younger, hotter burning ones are bluer, and older, cooler ones are more orange. Sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but it’s true.

Lens hoods will also do a great job keeping the elements off the glass of your lens. For the image above I did shoot into the snow so having a lens cloth to dry off the lens in between shots is also helpful. When I was shooting in Pittsburgh last month the temperatures were in the teens and I noticed that my rechargeable batteries were quickly dying. I extended the life of my battery by warming it up in my hands every so often. I’d also advise keeping an extra battery warm in your pockets that you can swap out.
So don’t be afraid to get out in the elements, rain and snow can bring unique reflections and alternative ways of seeing.

With the temperatures in the teens, ski masks on, two pairs of gloves, and foot warmers inserted, Tom Persinger and I braved the Pittsburgh nights to see what the full moon would reveal. We started in Pittsburgh’s largest park, North Park. Tom suggested that we check out the old Water Tower, officially called the Allegheny County North Park Water Supply System Standpipe. The only information I can find on this beautiful old tower is what was written on the plaque at the base of the standpipe:
Height of Dome – 101.6 ft
Height of Tank – 81 ft
Diameter of Tank – 35 ft
Storage Capacity – 300,000 gallons
Observation Deck – Elevation 1360.8 ft
Steps from Ground – 154
It was planned in 1935 by Chas. C. McGovern, W.O. Mansfield, and E.M. Barrr.
It was erected two years later, in 1937 by JNO. J. Kane, Geo. Rankin Jr., and Hohn S. Herron. I’ll spare you the controller and county department of works people but it was Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, Project No, PA,1422 0.

The tower is no longer a functioning public works and is open every so often for people to tour and see the observation deck. On this bitter night the gate was locked and as we approached we were surprised to see 50+ cars parked in the lot. What made things even more surreal was that the people getting in or out of the cars were dressed in Medieval costumes. Tom and I figured to have the whole Park to ourselves, but if you are going to share, why not with medieval folk? As it turned out they were members of the Society for Creative Anachronism and were performing a play about St Nicholas at the nearby park and rec building.
“The SCA is an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe. Our “Known World” consists of 19 kingdoms, with over 30,000 members residing in countries around the world. Members, dressed in clothing of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, attend events which feature tournaments, royal courts, feasts, dancing, various classes & workshops, and more.”

Anyway aside from dodging the knaves and wenches who were turning on and off their car lights (uhhmmm those aren’t from the pre-17th century), the water tower was amazing to shoot. The image I chose as the photo of the week was shot on the second night. I went back because it was a much clearer night and I wanted to play with star trails against the water tower. Long exposures taken towards the east or west yield longer and straighter star trails then if you were to expose towards the north and south. Knowing this, I found a western angle of the tower and cropped in a slightly abstract way as to get the feeling that the star trails were shooting out of the water tower’s observation deck, which looks a bit like a lighthouse.
On the first night of shooting during the full moon it was overcast during the first half of the evening. Notice the images below that glow purple, they are from the first night. The mixture of the overcast moonlight and sodium vapor lights created a purple color temperature that I embraced.
We decided to photograph the boathouse next, and on our way we saw people playing platform tennis outdoors under floodlights, 10pm and we were lucky if it was 20 degrees out! And when we got to the boathouse another 20 cars were parked outside. As we set up our shots, 20 bundled up people started walking over to us using their ski poles to balance their rapid walk. As it turned out this group was part of Pittsburgh’s Venture Outdoors organization, who were out on a Wolf Moon hike.  The Native Americans call the first Full moon of the year the Wolf Moon “Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages.” It is usually the biggest full moon of the year according to astronomers it is 30% brighter and 14% wider.  This happens because the moon revolves round the Earth in an elliptical orbit and at the time of the wolf moon it comes closer to Earth than usual. Again, ironically they probably thought we were the strange ones taking pictures in the cold!
I’ll be posting some other night images from our Pittsburgh soon, some of Tom’s are already posted here.
And if anyone knows any more information regarding the history of the Allegheny County North Park Water Supply System Standpipe please share.

So I’ve got a thing for bridges.

A significant part of my job involves traveling the United States, taking pictures along the way.  Besides the typical shots of the food we eat and monuments we see, I was looking to focus my “travel” work into a more cohesive theme.  I thought, “what can be found in almost every city?”  Looking back at my past work, I realized I have a fascination for man-made industrial objects, especially if they are set in a contrasting natural environment.   And thus the Bridge Project was born.

A bridge, as we commonly know, is a connection over an often dramatic obstacle.  The earliest bridges were made by nature, a simple log fallen across a creek.  The success of the Roman Empire relied heavily on their cement bridges and aqueducts that connected all roads to Rome.  The word bridge (besides the card game I’ve never figured out) is also a commonly used metaphor to describe a transitional route or phase between two times in one’s life.

I’m still in the collecting phases of the Bridge Project.  I started shooting it exclusively pinhole, mainly because I wanted to emphasize the solid foundation of the man made object and the continual flow of the natural obstacle, usually water.  Lately, I’ve been expanding the project to digital capture.   I often use a 10 stop neutral density filter over the lens to create exposures of up to 2-4 minutes during  bright sunny days when normal capture would be a fraction of a second.  I’m also utilizing the long exposures during the night to accentuate the flowing currents and clouds in the image.

Looking over last week’s images from Miami, it was this “end of the world” image of the Old Seven Mile Bridge, previously the Knights Key-Pigeon Key-Moser Channel-Pacet Channel Bridge, that won the Photo of the Week.

Constructed under the direction of Henry Flagler between 1909-1912 it was the first attempt to link the Florida mainland with the Key islands to the south and was part of the even bigger Florida East Coast Railway.  The construction employed over 4,000 men and the latest engineering innovations since this area was prime hurricane territory.  In fact, 3 hurricanes threatened the completion of the project.  When completed, it was one of the longest bridges in existence.  The total length was 35,815 feet and consisted of 335 steel girder 80-foot spans, 9,000 feet of concrete arch viaduct, and a 253-foot swing truss drawbridge span.  The Florida Overseas Railroad Bridge vied with the Panama Canal for the title of the 8th Wonder of the World.

The Railroad successfully withstood the storms and traffic until the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, The Storm of the Century, devastated the Keys. Over 420 lives were lost, more than half were WW1 veterans who were working on the new US Highway 1 for the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Though most of the concrete sections of the Florida Overseas Railroad survived the storm, the many miles of rock-made causeways and rail beds were washed out. Thus the linkage of the keys was destroyed.
Cars were beginning to replace trains as the modern mode of transportation and the Florida East Coast Railway was financially unable to reconstruct the bridge.  At that time, the state stepped in and construction of the Overseas Highway which utilized parts of Henry Flagler’s railroad bridges was completed in 1938.   The new two lane Overseas Highway served the Keys well and successfully survived many hurricanes and brought more traffic and tourism to the Keys then ever before.  But time takes its toll and 40 years later the groundwork for the new 7 mile bridge was laid.  The new bridge is a box-girder structure built from precast, prestressed concrete sections, comprising  440 spans.  See the below images for a detail shot of the concrete sections, with pelicans, as well as the comparison of the new and  old 7 mile bridge.  The bridge arcs to 65 feet near the center to accommodate boat passage but mainly rides closer to the water surface the rest of the way.  It was finished in 1983 and the old bridge was designated for preservation by the National Register.  It no longer carries cars and sections have been removed for safety and boat passage purposes.  Now these 23 old sections are used as fishing piers or by joggers and strollers who want to take a stroll along what looks like the end of the world.

SoBe Happy Hour ~ Nikon D700 24 2.8 lens ~ 2 minutes at 5.6 ~ ISO 400