Posting from a collection of night photos, inspired by entering UK Competition, "Life After Dark." I started walking around towns, photographing, when I lived in Lubbock, TX, even included some of those in an exhibit with Linda Cullum at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts. I enjoyed the low hum of cars, electric lights, and an occasional breeze. Or, nights I went shooting from my car, when it'd snowed and condensation began to form on my lens from the cold. I focused mostly on aged buildings cracking, brought to life by halogen, tungsten, or neon lights and equally important shadows. I also had the fortune of working with author Gail Folkins on the book, Texas Dance Halls, and many nights we spent listening, watching, and recording life in and around dance halls.
Then, when I graduated from TTU in 2006, I started focusing on trees: trees in landscape, trees against buildings, trees in urban settings.
Here are some examples from my earlier night work:
Above: from a fair in Fort Wayne, IN in 2006. I liked the lonely girl waiting for the night to be over.
From the Dance Hall book in 2005: I enjoyed the girl watching me watching the scene.
Above: a tree lit by a streetlight in Fort Wayne, 2006. It strikes me how the trees seem like living things emerging from the shadows, but hiding also.
Also from Fort Wayne.
Also from Fort Wayne.
Also from Fort Wayne. I don't know if I'd gotten a hold of Robert Adams' Summer Nights yet (see the images here), but I can definitely see the similarities.
Then, when I moved back down to MS, I kept shooting at night.
In the neighborhood in Ocean Springs, around Christmastime, 2007. I'd started shooting Christmas lights in Fort Wayne, but kept it up in MS. The above and below photos.
Above: I liked the sad look of deflated Christmas lawn ornaments.
Above: I enjoy cutting off or minimizing what many think should be the focus of photos. So, many would want the beauty contestant to be in the center of the photo. How boring! It's much more psychologically interesting to have her marginalized. Imagine how alone she might feel on stage, lights in her face, everyone watching and waiting for her to do everything perfectly.
Above: Mom in the kitchen at night in Steubenville, OH in 2008. Many happy memories of Mom in the kitchen, but this one's a look at another side of that experience.
Above: Once I'd shot trees for a while, I got into shooting flowering trees and flowers more specifically. This is a tulip poplar or a magnolia, I believe, in Jackson, MS in 2010.
Above: a church on the edge between Petal and Hattiesburg, MS, right next to the train tracks, in 2008.
Above: my older brother, David, and I went to the Henry Ford Museum and it was getting on toward evening and I saw these two lights, shining together in the darkness.
Above: went to the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby with a dear friend and her kids. I enjoyed the irony of the young'ins contrasted with the weapons, more specifically, artwork made from war paraphernalia.
Above: this final one, at evening rather than night, is also from Ocean Springs; somebody'd painted over the stop-sign. Who knows what inspired them.
Have a good one.
M
