That I like night shots of the city is no secret – since I was a kid playing with the “B” setting on my first 35mm film camera (a compact Ricoh with manual controls, so I could learn before moving onto an SLR), I have been fascinated with the way the camera can see the nocturnal world in a way that our eyes cannot, through a long exposure (sometimes just half a second, an eternity for a camera lens, sometimes several seconds, sometimes a minute to really drink in every bit of light in a very dark area).
But there is something even more compelling about nocturnal, urban shots on a rainy evening – the way the traffic lights, street lights, headlamps of vehicles, all glisten and reflect on the wet roads and pavements, creating a very distinct and atmospheric look.
I was returning from visiting dad, and so not carrying my tripod, or even Professor Bendylegs, my mini-tripod with the, yes, bendy legs. But as I exited Haymarket Station at the tail-end of Blue Hour on a rainy autumn evening, the scene was too good not to try and capture. So I did what I often do and improvised my long exposure shots, setting the mode and timer on the camera, then sitting it on handy posts or railings with flat tops, to steady it enough for a long exposure.
It doesn’t always work, but often does – obviously unlike a tripod you are very restricted in your choice of angles. You can sit the camera flat on this surface to steady it, but you can’t do up or down or angle it sideways. But within those restrictions you can still sometimes improvise something interesting, capture a moment of the city’s life.
Another thing which has fascinated me since I was a kid first messing around with camera settings, is that the long exposure not only drinks in more light than your eye, to show details it is too dark for human vision to make out clearly, it also has a fascinating effect on moving subjects. People in the background are blurred by movement, but still fairly recognisable, but those closer to the camera become transparent, like phantoms, ghosts walking the night, caught by the artificial eye. Passing vehicles are stretched out (like the “warp speed visual effect in Star Trek), or else vanish altogether, but long “light trails” from them remain, showing their track, while the vehicle itself often vanishes.
This one was much rougher, as it was handheld – there was nothing nearby I could sit the camera on to steady it and fit in the illuminated entrance to the original part of the rail station, so freehand it was. I took several shots, in black and white mode, this one, still rather rough, was the only one that was passable. But it had that kind of Noir look to it that I liked, and sometimes a little roughness suits that kind of subject matter. I must have done something right, because this one pic got over a thousand views and fifty favourites in the first 24 hours of posting it on my Flickr photo site (now over 1200 views and 61 faves, not bad for a spur-of-the moment shot taken walking home on a went night).
