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.
Pinging My Water Glass 
That’s neat. Stuff like that fascinates me, but I’ve never put in the time and energy to try it for myself.
What never?! Ah well, it was very difficult to do with film, due to the inability to see if you had come even close to the plan, at all, until the film was processed and returned. I’ve wasted a few rolls trying to get images that were beyond metering, bracketing away like crazy and crossing my fingers; generally for nothing, the reciprocity failure of film, the need to add more light than would be needed from strict calculation, usually trumped my guesswork. I started out trying to paint with light after building a large pendulum harmonogram that hangs from our garage ceiling. It’s like a giant spiragraph, if you haven’t seen one. Seeing the patterns coming off of that inspired me to try a single led suspended to be a pendulum to ‘paint’ the patterns within the field of a camera on its back. It never really worked; those old color LED’s were too faint and the wire/LED weight ratio made it too stiff to swing properly, lol. Still, it was fun.
With digital, you check the exposure and adjust and you know you’re getting something, or not.
You can even do interesting outlining on buildings with powerful flashes or flashlights. Anyway, I’m glad you thought the image interesting, thanks for your comment!
cheers,
pete
Oh I like that a lot! One cold night I set my camera on a tripod to take a shot of the moon. The shutter froze open so when I cranked the film I ended up with a streak (from the moon) that went halfway across the picture…instant ufo! I truly had people convinced it was! lol
Anita
What an interesting experiment. I think the public is largely naive about the TIME that it can take to create a photograph. It is so much more than just taking off the lens cover and clicking a button!
Hi Anita, now *that’s* a creative use of an out-take, lol. I hope your camera came unstuck, that’s scary, when parts stop working. Now for the fun photoshop outing: take a new image of the moon, intentionally placed off to one side and composite your UFO into the frame *evil snicker* and see how many people have caught on to the new world where you cannot trust an image without a pedigree :).
I’m happy you enjoyed the post, thanks for letting me know and for the anecdote!
cheers,
pete
Hi Bean, Thank you, I’m pleased that you find it interesting. It’s fun, too, but you’re right that it does eat up a little time. I think you’re ‘spot on’ about the perception of photography as the work of a moment. I was fortunate, when I first started learning, to run across a photographer who told me about the patience of Ansel Adams in achieving his images. Almost everyone who takes pictures knows about time of day affecting the “sweetness”, “flatness” and harshness of natural lighting, but Adams took that a notch more seriously, to plan for light that came seasonally and then put that together with dates where, through his experience snow would be ‘right’ or trees would be showing the best new growth or the water would be at full volume in a particular river. Add to that keeping track of the position of the moon if placing it in the shot would help balance an image and he worked out dates on which to be where, and at what time. And then, his famous mastery of the printmaking art with copious adjustments of parts of the exposure; dodging or burning-in areas under the enlarger.
Sorry, I ramble; got carried away just thinking about how much planning and being somewhere on time that requires, lol.
Of course, there is always some grabbed shot of a quirky moment or event, for which the only planning necessary is having a point-and-shoot camera along, that also becomes a prized image!
Thanks for checking out the new post and commenting!