Sodium Vapor Night Life ~ Royce Howland
Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 08:23AM 
Sodium Vapor Night Life • click to embiggenRoyce Howland wrote; I've been a serious photographer, whatever that means, for a couple of years. Lately I'm trying to pull into my work a lot more of the non-technical side of the equation -- the art of it, encompassing whatever goes beyond the use of tools and mechanical execution. Technical mastery doesn't take that long, but all that lies beyond it will take the rest of my life, I guess.
Anyway, the discussion in the above thread prompted me to send this particular image. I called it "Sodium Vapor Night Life". Last December, a friend & I went up to Vermillion Lakes, near Banff, Alberta, for a bit of night shooting. A sunrise or sunset over Mt. Rundle and Vermillion Lakes is one of the iconic Banff area shots, and many days you can find a metric boatload of photographers lined up along various points on the shore, especially for sunsets. As soon as the "main event" is over, almost always everyone bails back to town for hot supper or whatever. My friend wanted something different and suggested that we shoot well after dark. We were the only ones out there, besides the night critters.
Weather conditions were bad, but we know that "bad weather makes good photographs" so we pressed on. This photograph was like nothing I expected when setting out. Speaking as a technical critic, it has some flaws. And of course it's not really grand, iconic, or "pretty". But it hit me in a good way, as serendipity sometimes does. Instead of a classic view of the mountain with rich, sunset-lit clouds, a rising full moon reflected in the water, etc., we have murky tones, hazy clouds, and weird artificial colors from the street lights of Banff. During the day, looking in this direction you wouldn't really know all of that developed area is over there, since it is masked behind the trees. Part of the constellation Orion is visible above Mt. Rundle, but the stars can't compete with the town lights on this night.
Reader Comments (5)
"And of course it's not really grand, iconic, or "pretty"." What is the definition of grand or iconic or pretty. Is something grand or iconic or pretty only if it is the most bland cliched boring stock photography shlock. I often see stuff on this site that that I regard as grand, iconic and at least beautiful if not pretty. And strong denials that it is so. Do I have a different understanding of these words. What's wrong with me. (Or you.)
I've been thinking about traces of civilization in my own work. I use to remove houses or bits of roads from my non grand, iconic or "pretty" landscapes. Removing this stuff fits in with my fantasies of wilderness. And it's a reaction to feeling inundated by development. I remember having a fantasy as a kid on our family road trips. I imagined our car was some kind of magic machine that dissolved the road as we drove along. When I grew up, I wanted to be a mountain-man and there wasn't any place for me to do that anymore.
Now I sometimes leave this stuff in. It depends on how I'm feeling about the on-slot of development at the time I guess. It also seems to be a bridge to the work I'm starting to do in farm country around my home. I've begun to shoot locally partly as some kind of an exploration of my "wilderness" shots or fantasies and partly because gas prices are already over three dollars a gallon and are supposed to hit four this summer.
I think my next step is to add civilization into wilderness.
John Sexton in his book "Quiet Light", made images after the sun went down. He indicated the crowds would leave and the glow from any remaining light would light the subject in a quiet light.
This is the sort of material I'm interested in seeing now: "wilderness" landscapes that are altered in subtle and not so subtle ways by human intervention. As weird as this light is, it's strangely beautiful too. You may have avoided the iconic shot, but there is still a wow factor present.
Thanks for the comments, all.
Bill -- Terms like "grand, iconic, pretty" are sometimes characterized as synonymous with "trite, shallow, trivial, cliched". Personally I usually don't make such characterizations. I shoot what I feel, and viewers like what they like. There is more to "great art" than that but it wasn't my intention to open that can of worms. More what I was alluding to is a sense of needing to step out of the box when dealing with subjects that have been done before, either specifically or generally. Icons can benefit from taking a different perspective, and beauty can benefit from pursuing a different aesthetic quality.
Many shots have been taken of Mt. Rundle and Vermillion Lakes, and the "grand, iconic, pretty" way to shoot would be to have a nice sunset, with the mountain reflecting in the water, no visible signs of human influence, etc. I have quite a few of them and like them. :) But my friend encouraged a different take on this occasion, and the results I think step out of the box for me and for this location. That's really all I was trying to get at, not to disparage other types of image or debate the nature of beauty.
Jim -- Sexton's observation is right. Many photographers have a narrow band for acceptable subjects, light, weather conditions, etc. We can open our eyes by stepping out of that band. Around the time I took this, I did some night full moon shooting. The quality of light was quite different, which was interesting. But I also found my response to the scene was quite different by virtue of being out at an "odd" time, with nobody for company but the coyotes & owls. I want to do more of this "quiet light" photography...
Kent -- Thanks. It wasn't what I expected or visualized, but it does have an interesting character I thought. Who said, "there is no such thing as good or bad light, only light"?