Spiritual Night Abstractions
For those of you who have known me a short time, or just miss some of my older fine art, here’s a much needed taste. This series, Spiritual Night Abstractions, is the birth of a revolution in my photography. I was influenced at the age of 16 by a wonderful photographer Chris James, whose work is based exclusively at night. He taught me a wonderful formula for developing black and white film to achieve excellent shadow/highlight detail in such contrasty conditions. I eventually moved to color slide film because of the wonderful color that can be achieved through the different color temperatures emitted by lights at night. The most commonly found, being orange/yellow, other wise known as sodium vapor lights. On top of the different light sources, there are different films that perceive the light to be a different color. With these different films, the color can also change from brand to brand of film. It is a fascinating playground for a photographer:
Here is an example of the different colors found at night. The yellow is the sodium vapor as interpreted by the film. Of course we see that light as orange with our eyes. The Skate Park is lit by florescent lights. The film interprets that as green.
This is the same sodium vapor light that is found everywhere as seen through Fuji Film T64 (the “T” representing tungsten, for tungsten lighting). Notice (how could you not), how everything has turned blue! I got sick of that yellow after a while. Not wanting to have a portfolio of yellow images, I mixed up my use of film to create variety.
This image is of ice, at night, with a sodium vapor lamp a few yards back. It is taken with Kodak’s EPY T64. In comparison, there is a huge difference at night between how the two films react to light. In my final conclusions after working with these films. Fuji is a better film. I love the green that the Kodak gives off…. but the Fuji Film scans soooooo much better!
This is image is the result of a sodium vapor lamp (would have never guessed, huh?), but I have done some tweaking to the images to make the yellow appear more golden. I also forced the green that used to be in this image into shadow. This created a more dramatic atmosphere for this image.
A side note, all of these are shot with a 6×7cm, medium format camera. Some of these shown here (two of them) have been blown up to be 4×5 feet in print. They are beautiful (and for sale). Film is really the only medium to take such images with. Digital has not over come some of its problems that make it impossible to take long exposures with… In addition to a comparable camera being $40,000 in price.
-R
