Night Photography Blog by Martin Liew

Sunday, May 24, 2009

The Beauty of Night Sounds

Last night (23 May 2009), I stayed up for the whole night doing some really good nocturne photography in the north area, with a friend of mine. Not only was I making light-painting photographs, I was making some good black & white night photographs with my TLR camera as well.

As I have always love the night atmosphere with its tranquility, I too experienced the most beautiful sound of the night i.e. the cricket sound. The sound really adds up to the atmospheric mood in the quiet night especially when you are alone. There's this sense of peace, though I'm busy in the process of seeing, composing, thinking, planning for the light-painting. It's just so fabulous and mesmerizing, at least to me.

I got myself a digital voice recorder 3 months ago and have used it for recording seminar talks and to record essential detailed data information during all my night photography outings. Data information that includes location, camera settings, techniques I used, etc. So at that moment it occurred to me that I can use it to record the night sounds and the idea of putting up the recorded sounds in my night blog site just popped out. The sound would make my blog site more interesting and alive. Hopefully readers who visit my night blog site will be able to feel more present as they read and see my night photographs.

So here it is. I embedded one of the sounds I recorded on my blog site. If it distracts you, you can turn the player off which is located right at the bottom right section of my blog site.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

NOCTURNES : The Art of Surrealistic Landscape

Abandoned House
© 2009 Martin Liew Photography

Finally, I've come up with the right title for my nocturne photography work, NOCTURNES: The Art of Surrealistic Landscape.

The photograph above was made on 9 May, Saturday night with a couple of friends. Each of us took a different vantage point and I did all the light paintings. Pity we couldn't stay longer, so I decided to go back on my own on the following Tuesday, 12 May right after work.

I found myself getting gutsier and bolder than ever, traveling all the way up to the north area after work to make some good nocturne photographs, all alone in this dark quiet place. I really had a good time exploring the location and certainly enjoyed the quiet night atmosphere. Well, I didn't stay long, say for about one and a half hours.

I made a point and effort to go back on the following Saturday and stayed there until dawn. It was fabulous doing nocturnes in that place. You can view more nocturne images directly at my website here.

Stay tuned for more night and nocturnes photographs here at my blog site, OR you can subscribe to my blog via email or RSS, by selecting yr choice in the column, First Time Here?.

Thank you for reading.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Frank Relle Nightscapes Photography

Recently I came across this night photographer's work on COLOR, a magazine on collection of fine photography. His name is Frank Relle.

Frank Relle (b. 1976) is a photographer born and based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the recipient of numerous awards including a 2007 International Photography Award and the Photo Lucida Critical Mass top 50 photographers.His work is represented in major public and private collections, including the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. His photographs have been printed in the New Yorker, the Southern Review and the Oxford American magazines.

Relle continues to document the changing architecture of New Orleans and is working to share his images with an international audience hoping to inspire people around the world to help rebuild the city of New Orleans with the integrity she deserves.

To see Frank Relle's photography work, visit his website here and to understand Frank's photography work, you can read his 60-second interview blog article here.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

My Nocturnes Again

Well, here I am again. Back on to my night photography blog after a year of absence. I'm back again this time for another series of my nocturnes. Here are the 4 nocturnes I did on 2 separate nights. The first 3 shots were made last October and the last shot was made last night, all at the same location.

It was thrilling and full of excitement as I once again did it for this shot. And I thought to myself that I should go back and make some more nocturnes photographs. Well, I do have another location in mind that I want to explore, but based on my outing experience last night, my 2 camera batteries power just not enough to carry on making pictures for as long as 3 to 4 hours. I need to get 5 more spare batteries.

So if you have and want to sell off yr camera batteries, please do let me know. I'm using a Nikon D70s so it's the Li-on battery pack, EN-EL3a.

Some information on the photograph made:

This light-painting photograph was made with my Nikon D70s on Tamron 17-35mm f/2.8 lens, set at the smallest aperture @ f/22 on 'B' mode, for long exposure timing of about 3mins 30secs. Five colored filter gels are used - Blue, Yellow, Green, Lavender and Violet. WB is set to Incandescent (or Tungsten). Photograph is recorded on digital RAW.

The star burst effect on the extreme right frame is caused by the road side lamp, with which closing down to the smallest aperture will have this result. The 2 stripes of light trails are caused by the MRT trains coming and going from the MRT station nearby, on the top and passing by vehicles, on the bottom.

© 2009 Martin Liew Photography.
All nocturne photographs are solely under copyrights of Martin Liew.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

My Nocturnes

It's been 5 months now since my last night photography outing at Pulau Ubin last November. A couple of weeks ago I realised I still got a roll of Kodak slide film right inside my FM10 since the last night outing with a couple of friends at the Singapore Btanic Garden. Dated back October 2007. Well obviously the film color should have been deteriorated but what the heck. Since I'm doing nocturnes, this isn't a major issue to me.

So I decided to do some good nocturnes again. What you see here are the latest photographs I made. Pleasant viewing.

The following 2 nocturne images are results of re-make. I re-made them because I did not get it right in the past attempts. With the right amount of light-painting control and of course, the camera setting, I got it what I wanted.