NEWS Announcement!

Good evening fellow night dwellers! I hereby proudly announce that a new night photography group has set up in Flickr on 18 May 2014, Sunday, founded by fellow night photographer, CS Lee and myself.

It's called Night Photography Asia Community (NPAC for short).

Log on to Flickr now and find out more. You can do a Group Search in Flickr by typing the full group name or click on the image above.

The main reason why we set up this group is that both of us have not really come across any night photographs, be it on film or digital format, made in any part of Asia countries. We've seen many night photographs from US and Europe. But why isn't there any in Asia regions?  Maybe there are but just that it's scarce to come by seeing one.

Many photographers would pack up when night falls and call it a day. There are so many beautiful things at night to make photographs of. Night Photography covers a wide aspect of techniques and subjects namely landscape, cityscape, urban streets, abandoned buildings, Milky Way, star trails, moving clouds, light-paintings and many more.

Lee and I are both passionate about night photography and we want to create an awareness so as to promote Night Photography as well as to inspire many others to pick up this photographic craft. So we hereby call out to all night photographers from Asia countries to join us at NPAC.

We're still at the early stage and we do have plans for future NPAC activities. But for now we're taking one step at a time working our way to make NPAC active. Do spread the word and let your friends know about NPAC.

Last but not least, we have also set up a night photography fan page on Facebook. Do LIKE us here and get new updates on tips and tricks and many interesting topics on Night Photography.

We hope to see you guys and your work at NPAC. Cheers!

Night Street Photography

Tonight I'd like to talk about night street photography. In case you do not know that I do lots of day time street photography and it isn't the first time I did night street photography. I used to shoot color negatives on my Nikon FM10 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens at night. Did a little with my Nikon D70s with the same lens. Hand-held shooting technique certainly poses a great challenge for night street photography.

The night photo shown above was taken in the same wee hours after my visit at the Fort Canning Park (the Fort Canning Lighthouse). I was heading back home and walked past this back alley, next to this Ritz Mansions condominium. Literally I walked past the openly displayed couches. I did noticed but subconsciously my mind told me to turn back and I'm glad I did. I set up my tripod and made two quick exposures at 15 seconds each.

Lighting condition was drastically great in contrast with super hot spots from the street lamps on the far right frame and some from the wall lights on the signboard and under. The 2-persons seat couch on the foreground was lit and illuminated by the street light on left behind camera, while the other couch on the background was lit by the street lights as shown.

Really love the lights and shadows displayed here, with vertical lines, shapes, textures which caught my attention in the first place. I managed to get the "correct" exposure timing. In post-production, I tried to retain the original output results in Camera RAW and Photoshop but couldn't get the desired result I wanted. So I resorted to apply HDR effect by tone-mapping and some color correction adjustments.

Next, I converted the color to black and white just to see how this scene looks like and it looks great. Somehow it rekindles my love for night photography on film and digital night street photography.

Each medium would produce different results. Night photography on film is more towards fine art style and project basis. Night street photography is similar to day time street photography where daily night activities/events are captured candidly. Some film examples of night street photography I did back in October 2006 which I posted here. Some other night street photos using Nikon D70s below.

Simple Contentment

Dozed off

Indian Store

I'm planning to do more night street photography, both on film and digital, perhaps every fortnightly, and lesser light-paintings as I've mentioned before that there are lesser or no ideal abandoned places in Singapore left to make good light-painting photos. Well, I've always keep a lookout and keep searching. Alternatively I'd have to venture out to overseas where there are many interesting subjects, though not necessarily doing light-paintings.