Photographers review and research

Sata Shintaro

Night Lights

Sato Shintaro

These shots were taken in the streets of Tokyo and Osaka at night from 1997 to 1999, and in them I have avoided the more aesthetically pleasing locations such as seaside areas and the well-known “subcenters” in favor of the everyday disorder of the streets. Take a brightly-lit busy street bustling with people and remove the people: the purpose of the lighting is lost and only the glow remains – providing a glimpse of the streets we know well from a less familiar perspective.

images from Sata Shintaro’s Night Lights collection

did he take these images by staying until there were now people, or did he use a long exposure, long enough to eliminate the people?

Rut Blees Luxemburg

German photographer takes mostly images of urban landscapes at night.  She is also a lecturer at the royal collage of art.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/gallery/2009/mar/09/rut-blees-luxemburg-photography

she uses long exposure, using only ambient light.  Many of her images have a very orangy/red or green hue.

I came across an explanation about the colour of light during a Phlearn Tutorial on editing a film noire style image. He explained that most flashes and lights are set to mimic ‘white light’ or the light that we would typically get at midday.  This tends to have a bluish tint because the this the time when the radio waves combine the most and humans see this as white.

At the ends of the day, the light turns more yellow, orange and red. therefore many photographers use CTO (colour temperature orange) gels to recreate an night-time feel to photos.

http://www.westinghouselighting.com/color-temperature.aspx

this web page explains how you can use this scale to create the look and feel you want.

having now found this, I can compare with images I took for exercise 4.2 and notice that the later images definitely have a bluer tint as the light fades.