Night Photography

Position: 47°36’33.8″N 122°20’30.5″W

If you are short of friends, night photography is a sure-fire way of meeting people. Grab your camera and a tripod and head downtown. Once you begin setting up, people will flock to you full of curiosity. I might have written that line as, “…curious people will flock to you.” Both are true. Particularly if your subject is Pike Place Market in the heart of Seattle.

Aleta’s photographer in absentia is Wade. Keen readers of this blog will recall his evocative photos of Albarracín and Peñiscola, Spain from 2020. His were the very last pictures of the world as we knew it before Covid shut down everything. Five years later Wade pinged me and asked if I wanted to join him on a night shoot. He is taking a course on night photography and needed to make his quota for the week. It had been years since we hung out together taking photos, and decades since I had fooled around with long exposures. (I trust that is long exposures with a camera? – ed.)

We bundled our gear into the car and drove to Seattle’s most famous landmark just in time for closing. The doyens of Pike Place Market call it the heart of Seattle. They may be right. Certainly, it has attracted shoppers, foodies and tourists for as long as anyone can remember. Or more precisely, since 1907. The big red neon Market sign is unmistakable. Anyone making a film or TV series set in Seattle is obliged to provide at least a passing shot of it. Sleepless in Seattle, Frasier, Grey’s Anatomy – they all did it. Now it was our turn to immortalize the place, within the limits of digital media.

Drunk

We parked on the street just north of the market. Whoever decided city parking warranted an “app” deserves a special place in the eighth circle of Hell. Today, every city uses a different app for parking. Invariably it is not the one you already have on your phone. That means you are downloading, installing, navigating, and paying using an entirely different piece of software everywhere you go. A few parking locations maintain a cash or card machine within walking distance. Most are crippled from neglect. Seattle street parking fees remain in force until 8:00PM. That is three hours longer than anyone on duty gives a crap about. At least the jabbering drunk slumped in the doorway wasn’t going to rat us out. It is an honour system. We are honourable people. At least Wade is. I am a Luddite. And we were in his car.

At the market, a pedicab driver struck up a conversation with Wade. First, he asked what we were up to. Then he asked what camera Wade was using and mentioned he had a Sony. I lost the thread of their conversation. I had extended my tripod’s legs and set my camera on it. Now, my world existed only in my viewfinder. Everything was constrained to a ratio of 3:2. For the next 15 minutes nothing else mattered. It is one of the truisms of human nature. When you paint the shape of a box and tell people to do something inside the lines, they get creative. Unlimited opportunities often generate stasis and confusion – there are simply too many choices. Limitations, even fabricated ones, stimulate the mind.

FOMO

Wade broke my reverie and shared a couple of images he had captured. I was inspired. In the decades since I first played with slow shutter speeds at night, film has become a thing of the past. The marginal cost of learning something new in photography has effectively dropped to zero. Emboldened I emulated, imitated and experimented. I discovered, for instance, if you set the shutter for a two second exposure then leave everything still for half a second before zooming or panning, you can capture a legible sign and surround it with streaks of light.

Over the next couple of hours, we met a polite security guard who asked us to put away our tripods lest someone stumble over them. No one else was around. Given the hour and chill air coming off Puget Sound, a sudden influx of clumsy day trippers seemed unlikely. Still, I admired his resolute dedication to his job. Across the road, a young woman collared us and asked us what we were up to – if we were shooting a promotional piece for the city? We denied any motive other than artistic fulfilment. This seemed to disappoint her, and she wandered away leaving more than a suggestion of FOMO in her wake.

Photos

I took 155 photos. About five rolls of film. Here is what I salvaged. When Wade posts his, I will add a link:

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