I’ve given a lot of thought to my very obvious preference for night photography. Last month the heat was unbearable 24/7 for weeks. Ton is pretty insistent that I curb my tendency to go out into the worst hours of the day and wander, pretty much since one time last year I suffered a touch of heat exhaustion with all the dehydration and subsequent diarrhea that implies. So avoiding the worst heat and the intense UV (I told you I’ve had some trouble with skin cancers of a minor variety) makes night shooting pretty attractive.
But that isn’t really what it is. I am not very interested in creating sharp, perfectly focused photographs most of the time. And I’m not particularly inclined to shoot people. Daytime photographs that are slightly out of focus or subject to camera shake are very difficult to make interesting. I prefer shooting wide open or close to it at low shutter speeds and I use manual focusing to try to control the out-of-focus effect and hope for the best with camera shake. This is almost impossible in daylight. I did buy an ND filter to darken those brilliant sun fields when I realized how much I disliked shooting at F8 and 500ss but I also dislike having to fool around with gear.
My repetitive shooting down sois or into framed spaces with distant “lit areas” is something I just do, again and again. I pretty much always deliberately underexpose my shots, usually with a mind to bringing up textural details in the dark areas in post. For me there is an abstract quality to these photos and often a painterly quality to the colours that emerge from these underexposures that are the essence of what I’m after.
I also like the play of sodium streetlights, both high and low pressure in some streets, with the LED white-blue monsters that are replacing them, and with all the other varieties of lights that throw their colour into street scenes at night up and down sois around our home in Nonthaburi and in Yaowarat aka Chinatown and Phahurat aka Little India in Bangkok.
I have a small flash now and intend to buy another that I can synch with it for another kind of night photography altogether that I would like to try. This stuff will involve people and slow shutter speeds and wider DOF than I now prefer to employ.
Sometimes I just think that I have drifted so far away from shooting in daylight that I haven’t developed an eye for it,
Smoke and Mirrors 
I thought perhaps these shots were taken at night because it’s cooler, but I see that nights are sweltering too.
I really like the trio sitting in front of Fahseng Limited. That deserves a four-foot high Cibachrome print.
I’ve given a lot of thought to my very obvious preference for night photography. Last month the heat was unbearable 24/7 for weeks. Ton is pretty insistent that I curb my tendency to go out into the worst hours of the day and wander, pretty much since one time last year I suffered a touch of heat exhaustion with all the dehydration and subsequent diarrhea that implies. So avoiding the worst heat and the intense UV (I told you I’ve had some trouble with skin cancers of a minor variety) makes night shooting pretty attractive.
But that isn’t really what it is. I am not very interested in creating sharp, perfectly focused photographs most of the time. And I’m not particularly inclined to shoot people. Daytime photographs that are slightly out of focus or subject to camera shake are very difficult to make interesting. I prefer shooting wide open or close to it at low shutter speeds and I use manual focusing to try to control the out-of-focus effect and hope for the best with camera shake. This is almost impossible in daylight. I did buy an ND filter to darken those brilliant sun fields when I realized how much I disliked shooting at F8 and 500ss but I also dislike having to fool around with gear.
My repetitive shooting down sois or into framed spaces with distant “lit areas” is something I just do, again and again. I pretty much always deliberately underexpose my shots, usually with a mind to bringing up textural details in the dark areas in post. For me there is an abstract quality to these photos and often a painterly quality to the colours that emerge from these underexposures that are the essence of what I’m after.
I also like the play of sodium streetlights, both high and low pressure in some streets, with the LED white-blue monsters that are replacing them, and with all the other varieties of lights that throw their colour into street scenes at night up and down sois around our home in Nonthaburi and in Yaowarat aka Chinatown and Phahurat aka Little India in Bangkok.
I have a small flash now and intend to buy another that I can synch with it for another kind of night photography altogether that I would like to try. This stuff will involve people and slow shutter speeds and wider DOF than I now prefer to employ.
Sometimes I just think that I have drifted so far away from shooting in daylight that I haven’t developed an eye for it,