Not Quite Night series #91

Good evening nightographers! It's another night blog to share my new night street photograph on Not Quite Night series. Tonight I would be taking you to this interesting location where I made NQN #91. So let's jump right into.

Photo Copyright Andrew Mississippi Ng

OK first off, I want to clarify that I did not make the above photo. It was made by a friend of mine back in February 2012. It's an interesting street photograph in which a subject walked right into the frame and the photographer had captured it at the right moment. A nice composition with the 4 red painted doors juxtaposed to the white door on the left side.

I've always been keeping a look out for interesting and ideal places to make photographs of for the NQN series. One evening while I was surfing and browsing on Facebook, I came across another street photographer's image of this alleyway. Unfortunately, I'm not able to show you his photograph. So I would try my utmost way to describe.

He made the shot in the evening or nighttime, as he mentioned in his Facebook post, in which an old man (on back view) was cycling through the alleyway. His approach in the composition is pretty straight on i.e. he stood right in the middle of the alleyway, with the camera in portrait orientation. I believe he made the shot handheld with a mirrorless camera.

Upon looking at his photograph, my friend's street photograph came across my mind. I was so inspired and thrilled as this location is the right place for my NQN series. So I went there in late September during the twilight hour, not with my DSLR camera but made a few shots with my Apple iPhone. So much has changed over the past 8 years. No more red and white painted doors. No drastic changes though. I was trying to replicate the same composition. Of course, no two images are alike. Anyway, this was what I made out of it as I wanted to include the sky. The photo was post-processed in Snapseed and I further converted it to black and white, which looks pretty good to me, too.

I was hoping for somebody to walk across in the far alley way, or walking towards me, but no one came by. Anyway, it didn't matter to me at all as it was meant for a location recce shoot. The color photo seems to be good enough to be added in the NQN series, but somehow I wanted to capture it on proper photography equipment i.e. on my Nikon D300. Well, my Ricoh GR2 was dead since last December. It had served me well for the last 2 years. So currently I rely more on my Nikon D300 for most of my night photography work.

Two weeks later in the wee hours, I went back to this location. So where is this place anyway? You might be asking. It's not hard to find as it's located off Cook Street, in Tanjong Pagar Road area. While there are bridal shops as well as many food restaurants along the main road, this alleyway is hidden behind a KTV building.

The reason why I went there in the early hours between 5:00AM to 7:00AM, is to avoid the dining crowd and other distractions. The whole area was so quiet and no passing vehicles on the road until after 6:00AM. Well, something unexpectedly occurred after I made a few shots. The weather changed abruptly, with strong gusts of wind blowing and knocking down restaurant signages and some garbage. The whole night scene looked like part of a sci-fi movie scene.

I knew I have to work fast, and so I did. I made various perspective shots so I have more to choose from during the editing part. A short moment after I made for the last exposure, it started to drizzle. I kept all my gears and made my way to the opposite side of Tanjong Pagar Road where there's a bus stop. Then the downpour began.

Somehow this downpour had ruined my plan for making the NQN photograph as I wanted to capture the first light at 6:35AM. I was stuck at the bus stop. Well, it didn't really stop me from taking pictures with my Apple iPhone. I went ahead and snapped a few using Camera+ app. The pictures are posted recently on this blog, namely Unique Bus Stop. Night Rain, Rainy Duxton, Zebra Crossing, Night 38, and Street Silence.

Well, it was nonetheless a productive morning. As the morning sky gradually turned brighter and the downpour became drizzle, I took a bus home. I didn't work on the alleyway photos when I got back home, not until a couple of days later. Instead, I created 2 contact sheets based on the exposure time of 1 second and 2 seconds respectively. All RAW files you see here, are unedited.

With these contact sheets, I was able to have an overall view, and easier to compare and select the best one. In the end, I chose the one highlighted in red. All images were exposed at ISO 400 at various focal lengths for different on-camera cropping and compositions. I could set the native ISO (200 for Nikon) for lesser digital noises and cleaner images, but I like to work at 400 for most of my night photography. I want to be able to kick in more ambient and expose slightly more to the right side of the Histogram. It would be good to expose more and not to the extend to blow off the highlight details.

Since I recorded all exposures in RAW format, I was able to pull up shadow details and retain the highlights. I also wanted to create a moody atmosphere in the context of NQN. So this is the final result which I like it so much. But I couldn't resist converting into black and white.

So there you have it for tonight. Thank you for staying all the way to the end. If you like the photos, do leave your comments down below and let me know which version you like best; the color or black and white. If you like my work, do subscribe to my blog for new updates. You can follow me and my NQN series on Instagram, too.

Thank you for your time and good night.