Nighttime is changing. From the cul-de-sac out front, there used to be fine viewing of the breathtaking sweep of the Milky Way, the vast river of lights in the night sky. The sky even inspired us to make a homemade Newtonian reflector telescope, with a hand-ground 8-inch mirror, the better to explore something so immensely larger than our little local planet. Now, the weird glow of the sodium-vapor streetlights and the always-on mode of the motion-activated security lamps on many of the houses has relegated the telescope to storage. On a good night, one can still make out Orion or Cygnus, perhaps Cassiopeia; see Venus, or Jupiter or Saturn; an infrequent sight is the north star. I think we’ve lost a lot, on the whole, by obscuring the nightly reminder of the enormity of space and the calculable, yet incomprehensible, spans of distance and time that we putter through on our little orbit, around a middling-size star, in a breakneck galactic waltz. Aside from spectacular events, such as the recent nearest approach by Mars, folks roll up the sidewalk long before ten p.m.
What’s a night-oriented explorer to do?
Well, as I was re-organizing my old vinyl albums, I came across the Synergy (Larry Fast), “Games” record and once again wondered about the floating ring of light in the cover photograph. I’d been wanting to try something like that for years, since first seeing the cover. I figured all I need is a tripod or stable surface next to the street, a camera that has a ‘B’, or bulb, setting, a trigger that can lock the shutter open and a flashlight. Walk towards the camera, circling the flashlight, and Bob’s my uncle, yes?
When I had a free night to try it, I went out and found a position on our front bricks where setting up a camera wouldn’t point into a neighbor’s house. I stepped down to walk off the distance to the court’s only street lamp. At step number 8, the security lights on the house to my right flared on, over me and across the entire setting, even illuminating the walnut trees in the backyard of the house on the other side of the street. I guess if anything larger than a shrew moves down the street on that side, the lights are set to certify that there is nothing lurking in the tree across the street, masterminding a shrewish reconnaissance. Okay, I had to find the boundary to avoid triggering the lights. At least the neighbor’s no-nonsense German Shepherd wasn’t barking. I waited. Twelve minutes later, dark was restored. I went back, set out again, near the left curb, and at step 11, a much more contained, yet still shot-ruinous, lighting system went on at the house on the left. I waited. Four minutes and off. I started my walk down the middle of the street and got 13 steps along when the house on the right lit up the world again. Twelve more minutes went by. By now, I was almost cold enough to call it quits but tried once more and…success! A corridor about six feet out from the left curb triggered no lights on nor any dog to barking.
The next night, I went out and timed the walk back from the street lamp; about a minute and a half. I took an exposure to see what it really recorded and, based on that shot, closed down a number of stops in order to give me a 90-second exposure. I had just enough leeway to do it; ISO to 100 and the lens aperture as small as possible(f32) to give me a ballpark 90-second exposure. Now, time to try it out. One false start, and a twelve-minute wait later, I was able to complete three attempts. Any neighbor looking out a window might have been amused to see me slowly baby-stepping forward while whizzing a small, three-LED flashlight around as fast as I could swing my arm in circles while still pointing the light forward. Cold, tired and seeing some results in the shot review, I took the remote switch off of the camera, put the camera around my neck, picked up the tripod (which started the dog next-door barking), and went in.
While this is not yet the photograph I was looking to make, the seemingly unsupported light, moving about with no one there, opens so many possibilities for more experimenting, doesn’t it?
G’night, folks, be well.
pete s.
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