Research
Research Document
Research
In my professional practice I studied Artificial Light comparing the same situation or building before and after midnight to look at the differences that businesses have developed to save on energy so cutting down on the cost of running their businesses.
I have been an electrician nearly all my working career and this help me identify such things as well as giving me an interest in night photography where subjects become surreal with the advent of a long shutter speed.
In my research for this project I found that there were not to many photographers doing the same type of work as I have done so I looked at prominent street photographers who do night photography.
Photographers
https://www.nicholasgooddenphotography.co.uk/best-london-landscape-photography
Nicholas Goodden
He was born in the UK but was raised in France when at the age of 21 moved back to London and started taking images of London.
https://calistaaspin.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/research-nicholas-godden
In this blog on the website I found that who ever had written it was doing research for a project and they had found Nicholas Goodden, I also am interested in him because he is quite a prominent urban night scene photographer based in London. Reading the blog, I find that Godden does very similar work to what I have been doing so I have researched him because I am attracted to his style of photography and his imagery.
He is an Olympus ambassador so quite influential with other photographers and has been included in the top 100 socially influencers. His work is based around London and from looking at his images I can see that he prefers to use wide angle lens, this for me is a good idea although you must lookout for too much distortion created by these lens.
He does Black and white images but for my project this is of no use as I wish to portray the rich colours that can be obtained by slow shutter speeds and the different colours of lights that are available during the night, i.e. Fluorescents will give a green colour while sodium lighting will give an orange colour and with the two together it can combine to give even more different colours.
In all the photographs camera technical data is not known and not needed as each scene will need its own data, so when setting up using a tripod the photographer must choose a large aperture setting of around f11 – f16 to give depth of field and a low ISO 100 or below to give a slow shutter speed of over 20 seconds, if this cannot be achieved in camera then a Neutral density filter will be needed to reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor.
Here we see one of Godden’s works taken from Pinterest, its shows the glass dome at the Louvre in Paris and we can clearly see it a night shot full of colour and positioned to show the reflections in the water around it. I like this work although it taken in Paris and showing a popular tourist spot it’s the colours and the reflections that appeal to me.
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/245024035954871758/ image of the louvre in Paris by Nicholas Gooden
By Nicholas Gooden , again Goodden has found a a spot that is a tourist location but clearly photographing the scene at night has clearly changed it from being a tourist record shot to a much more attractive fine art image with rich colours that are accomplished by long exposure
Here Goodden has used the blue hour just after Sunset to photograph this image and although not a long exposure as the clouds are not blurred is still represent a good fine art image
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/245024035954871768/
by Nicholas Goodden
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/164311086382656263/
by Nicholas Gooden
This is a classic slow shutter speed image with the trailing lights of oncoming cars so I think that this has been flipped at some stage as the cars are coming towards the camera
Liam Wong
Born and raised in Scotland before moving to Canada becoming a director of a video gaming company. In parallel with his video gaming Wong was teaching himself photography.
In 2015 he had his photo debut series called Tokyo nights capturing the beauty of the night time scenes in this city. He is now freelance and works on unannounced project across film video games and photography.
It’s his beautiful night time scenes of Tokyo that has attracted me with its very vibrant colours and how he has included people in these images so therefore they are not slow shutter speeds so he must be using a very open aperture around 2.8 high ISO and a fairly quick shutter speed around 1/30 second to minimize blurring.
It’s said he was inspired by scenes from Blade Runner by Ridley Scott in his memories of green shoot and thus perhaps is why he has included people in his night time scenes.
In the image below we see just a few people but it’s the colours which seem slightly muted, but the amount of signage is unbelievable and adds to the beautiful and atmospheric shot we see here.
I think too that he may have gone for the slightly green effect that you get from Fluorescents as one of his series is called memories of green
From the series called Blade Runner by Liam Wong
Photo by Liam Wong
https://www.liamwong.com/#/memories-of-green/
Liam Wong from the series Minutes to |Midnight
https://www.liamwong.com/#/minutes-to-midnight/
In this image we still have people included but what beautiful colours he has got from these streets in Tokyo, how I would love to go to locations and take something like this.
In this image we still have people included but what beautiful colours he has got from these streets in Tokyo, how I would love to go to locations and take something like this.
https://www.liamwong.com/#/tokyo-after-hours/
Here we can see that Wong has like me gone for the late night shots again beautiful colours but no people this time.
https://www.liamwong.com/#/tokyo-after-dark-haze/
Tokyo after dark /haze by Liam Wong .
Again, in this image we can see that Wong has included a person on a bike perhaps cycling home after work. His presence gives scale to this image and again contains beautiful subdued colours
https://www.liamwong.com/#/valentines-day/
Another by Liam Wong intitled Valentine’s day in it we see a couple walking through the streets of Tokyo perhaps the woman is being taken to a restaurant by her partner to celebrate Valentine’s day. But it’s the blue hues with the subdued neon sign lighting that really make this image. Also there seems to be no flare from the lights so therefore must be a fairly fast shutter speed and emphasized by the fact that the couple are not blurred.
https://www.liamwong.com/#/tokyo-nights/
photo by Liam Wong called Tokyo Nights
here again we have people included in this image which give scale to it but where oh were is the purple colour on the pavement coming from it must a neon sign high up somewhere but such a well seen shot
Mike Will
taken from his website above its an about me written by an unknown author.
“Mike Will is a creative photographer known for his vibrant urban style. Based in London, UK but travelling all over the world to create content and energetic brand campaigns, his portfolio includes night cityscapes, travel, landscapes, music festivals and portraits”.
“Mike’s photography journey started in the UK but has taken him all over the world capturing moments he once only dreamed of seeing”
“In 2017 Mike became a Sony European Imaging Ambassador working alongside industry leading creatives as apart of the Sony team.”
https://www.mvisuals.net/copy-of-landscape
On this page of his website we can see some of his urban night imagery manly taken Hong Kong and around the world which again use long exposures to give light trails and blurred moving images.
https://www.mvisuals.net/copy-of-landscapeHong Kong
has still got many of its sign and lights but also many capitol cities also still have interesting features and lighting. Again, it’s the night urban street with its lighting than also fascinate me and have drawn me to observe this photographers work.
He has also shown himself to be quite a competent photographer as Sony have awarded him an ambassador title
He also has a good Instagram site with 1343 post and looking through he has excellent night time photographs but has to promote Sony camera’s and has a tendency to advertise his photoshop pre-set collection.
Mike Wills on
https://www.instagram.com/m.visuals/
Another night time photographer is London Based
David Gutierrez https://www.davidgutierrez.co.uk/
A London photographer specialising in architecture photography with much of his work being taken as night shot around London. Again, like many of the other professionals he travels around to big cities like Hong Kong and Tokyo Paris and Bilbao.
In his nightime cityscape photography we can clearly see his use of moving traffic and transport to create light trails and this is another photographer who use artificial light and its different light tempratures and colours to create wonderful night time scenes from around the world.
His passion for photography started while he was living in New York in 1999 with an analogue camera but on moving back to London in 2002 he then moved over to digital.
https://www.davidgutierrez.co.uk/london-photographer–architecture–streaming-light.html
Swansea Marina, South Wales photography
Research into Mark G Adams night photography shoot, at the marina
My research about Swansea Marina with the night time artificial light came from
a youtube video
The name of the author is Mark G Adams of One Camera One Lens who has posted his blog about a night time visit to Swansea marina at.
Swansea Marina Night Time Photography
he stated that evening meets with a group called great photography walks of Souith Wales were a rarity and he was looking forward to photographing Swansea marina at night armed with his Fuji camera and tripod.
The beautiful images he took of Swansea Marina after dark inspired me to go down to take a look for myself but on the day I went there seemed to be less light than he had seen, so I went away with just a couple of images from there and nothing like the amount of different images he had taken.
Although my night time photography had a different theme than his I really like the images he produced of some of the buildings and streets in the marina area.
image 1, Swansea Tower by Mark G Adams
In this image we have a really colourful night scene created not only from artificial light from vehicles moving along the road in front of the building we also have the artificial light from the rooms in the Tower adding to the image.
image 2 by Mark G Adamsthis is taken at the blue just after sunset and clearly shows the artificial light being switched on as darkness approaches.
Image 3 by Mark G Adams shows the tower from the other side of the marina again well lit with colourful artificial lighting
image 4
Mark G Adams again another wonderful image.
Image 5 Mark G Adams of the swansea councill building near the marina. When I went there this building was in total darkness
image 6 by mark G Adams
Image 7 author, Mark G Adams is another wonderful example of a building lit by the different tepratures of artificial light in this building
image 8 Mark G Adams
Image 9 Mark G Adams of the artificial light in the marina Harbour
Looking at the above images I would like to return to this area myself and hope that I can find more buildings than just the tower lit up by artificial light to photograph.
Even the council offices are lit up and all his images are crisp and sharp as would be expected from using a tripod with low ISO.
Bibleography
https://www.nicholasgooddenphotography.co.uk/best-london-landscape-photography
https://www.liamwong.com
https://www.mvisuals.net/
https://www.mvisuals.net/copy-of-landscape
https://www.instagram.com/m.visuals/
https://www.davidgutierrez.co.uk/
https://www.davidgutierrez.co.uk/london-