Tom Paiva Book Signing

Night photographer Tom Paiva will be at a book signing for "Art Deco San Franciso: The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger". The book was authored by Therese Poletti, and photographed by Tom. You may remember Tom as one of the instructors of The Nocturnes workshops, as well as the author/photographer of Industrial Night. The new book is not a night photography book, per se, but you will recognize Tom's signature name and immaculate compositions.

(Castro Street Theater, by Tom Paiva)

The free reception is at 5:30 pm at the American Institute of Architects, 130 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco.

There will also be a tour of some extant Pflueger buildings downtown at 4:00 pm with Poletti and Paiva. The tour meets at 140 New Montgomery, San Francisco, CA (aka, the "Telephone Building"), and will end at the reception. Cost is $15 for AIA members ; $20 nonmembers, with the proceeds going to the AIA.

Review: "Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration"

Many night photographers credit Troy Paiva’s light painting work as their introduction to night photography. Troy has been shooting abandoned towns and salvage yards under moon-lit skies for over nineteen years. After building a large following of admirers through his website Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West he published his first book, Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West, in 2003. Although this book filled a big void in the world of color photography books, and it included great textual descriptions of his explorations in the desert, many readers felt that the print quality did not do justice to Troy’s photographs.


Since 2003, Troy has switched from film to digital photography. Fueled by the new possibilities of the digital medium, and the great reception to his new work on the photo-sharing site Flickr.com, Troy released his second book Nignt Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration in mid-2008.

When I interviewed Troy in 2003 for my short documentary film Night of the Living Photographers, he told me that part of his fascination with abandoned locations was the reality that many of them ceased to exist soon after he visited them. We talked about how we were heading to a point where all of the good photo locations would be gone someday. Fortunately, photo-sharing sites such as Flickr have opened up the possibility of exploring many new, previously-unknown locations thanks to new limitless social networks. Many of those “new” locations are featured in this book.

Readers of Troy’s Flickr site Lost_America, will already be familiar with most of the photographs in Night Vision: automobile wrecking yards, abandoned resort hotels, abandoned train stations and Naval shipyards and, everyone’s favorite, airplane salvage yards. If you’re wondering, “Should I buy the book when the photographs are already online?” The answer is “yes”. Far superior to the first book, the print quality of Night Vision is excellent. The photographs are larger, and immaculately printed on a black background. Although Night Vision does not include the long writing that was present in the first book, each photograph includes informative captions.

If you already own Lost America, then you’ll be very impressed with Nignt Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration. If you don’t own any of Paiva’s books, yet; then start with the second book.

BTW, Lost America is out of print. Remaining copies are going for as high as $116 on Amazon Marketplace.

Studio Nocturnes

The San Francisco conglomerate of night photographers, The Nocturnes, will be hosting Studio Nocturne once again as part of the San Francisco Open Studios. Studio Nocturne will offer work for sale by ten local night photographers at the historic Fort Mason. The roster of photographers will include Tim Baskerville, Rebecca Chang, Todd Friedlander, Mark Jaremko, Marilynne Morshead, Deborah Rourke, Greta & Manu Schnetzler, Lena Tsakmaki, John Vias and Roxanne Worthington.

(Photo by Tim Baskerville)

The gallery will be open from 11am-6pm on October 11 & 12 in Landmark Bldg A, at Fort Mason, San Francisco, CA (directions). Admission is free.

SanDisk Extreme III 8GB CF Cards: $4 each

Here's a deal that you should take a look at, especially if you're waiting-listed for the HD video-powered EOS 5D MkII (note: the Nikon D90 does not support CF memory).

Adorama is selling SanDisk Extreme III 8GB compact flash cards for $57 each. With the $40 manufacturer's rebate, that works out to only $17 each.

But, WAIT! THERE'S MORE...

If you read the rebate paperwork, Sandisk will pay a rebate of $160 (not $120) if you buy three of these cards at the same time. That means three of these cards will cost $171, minus the $160 rebate, for a total of $11 for three cards (that's 24GB of relatively fast memory!). I prefer to look at it as only $4 per card *. You can take a ton of night photographs in RAW mode with that much memory in your back pocket.


They also have similar deals on the 4GB and 16GB versions of this card, although they seem to be backordered on the 4GB and 16GB cards, right now.

* As you may have noticed, I'm a "round it off" kind of guy.

The Canon 5D MkII

Last week Canon announced the release of the EOS 5D MkII (daytime sample images are available here). Aside from the whopping 21 megapixel full-frame sensor, this new camera also offers very high ISO performance, as well as the ability to shoot HD video. While I regret to inform you that nobody sent me a pre-production loaner for evaluation, professional photographer Vincent LaForet was able to get his hands on one for two days.

(Photo by Canon, Inc.)

Although Vincent didn' t have the chance to test the long-exposure noise performance of the 5d MkII, he did get the chance to shoot some nighttime HD video under ambient street lights, and he posted some frame grabs from the video (here, here and here). Vincent has asked that nobody repost these images due to his agreement with Canon. So, you'll have click over to his blog to see them. And make sure you take the time to read his hands-on evaluation of this beast.

As you look at his shots, keep in mind that these are not 21 megapixel still photographs. These individual frames of HD video.

A Plea for Help: Since some of you will probably get your 5D MkII before I do*, I would be very interested posting any readers' long exposure tests at night. What I'd really to see is comparable frames taken under a clear, starlit sky with 5, 10 and 20-minute exposures at a low ISO. If you'd like to repeat the experiment at a higher ISO for comparative purposes, that would be even better.

* Since I don't have any immediate plans to order one, it goes without saying that some of you will definitely gets your before I do.

Thanks to Joe Reifer for pointing me to Vincent LaForet's blog.

Night News - September, 2008

September is the beginning of the "high season" for night photography here on the West Coast of the USA: the nights are getting longer and the night skies are clearing up along the coast. There are also a few night photography shows coming up.

Greta and Manu Schnetzler have a show called "Surreal Night" at the Sports Basement (1590 Bryant St, San Francisco, CA). The reception is Friday, September 5, 6-8pm.

(Photo by Manu Schnetzler)

Also, John Vias will have some of his night photographs included in the "Glimpes of Time" show at the Joyce Gordon Gallery (406 14th St, Oakland, CA) from September 5-29, 2008. The reception is September 5th from 5:30-830pm.

(Photo by John Vias)

There are more night photography shows coming up, including one in Texas! I'll have more information on that in my next post.

By the way, I'm still working on my review of Troy Paiva's latest book Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration. If you can't wait, here's the synopsis: It's absolutely stunning, and it's a must-have for any enthusiast of night photography. If you loved Troy's first book, you'll be amazed at the second book. So go buy it, even before you see my in-depth review.

And if that's enough, you should also buy a copy of Jill Waterman's Night and Low-Light Photography, which includes some of my color night photography from the past few years.

Night and Low-Light Photography

This has been a busy summer for night photography books. First, Troy Paiva's long-awaited second book Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration comes out. Next, Jill Waterman's new book Night and Low-Light Photography was released early this month. The subtitle "Professional techniques from experts for artistic and commercial success" sums it up quite well, although they could also add "includes lots of beautiful photographs".


As the Introduction says,

In Night & Low Light Photography, author Jill Waterman looks at the work of 30 top professionals, examining their real-life projects as well as their tips, techniques, and unique approaches.

The result is a beautiful yet practical compendium covering every aspect of night and low-light photography–digital and film capture in all formats, color and black & white, commercial and fine art. The moon and stars, weather conditions, atmospheric effects, cityscapes, industrial light, night events, night landscapes.

All this and more is presented in a lavishly illustrated, one-volume resource–an indispensable guide for those seeking insight, inspiration and provocation in making pictures at night.

Well, that certainly sounds better than anything I could have written. I'm especially proud to have been included in the thirty photographers whose work and techniques have been included in this great book (shameless self-promotion #1). If you're familiar with night photography, you'll probably recognize many of the contributors to this book; which includes Tim Baskerville, Tom Paiva, Lance Keimig, Troy Paiva, Steve Harper and many others. In fact, you can also hear many of those photographers speak about their work in my documentary film on night photography (shameless self-promotion #2).

(Warming Hut, by Andy Frazer)

There is a comprehensive website with more information about this book, including contributors' portfolios, a featured artist, and blog.

Published by Amphoto Books, the book is 208 high-quality pages of great reading and looking. You can buy your copy right now from Amazon, or many other locations.