I absolutely love long exposure night time photography, for me its a far more spiritual mindful time to shoot and that element of doubt and anticipation of just what you are going to get is heightened. To me that’s film photography in a nutshell, that nagging doubt and anticipation then reward rather than instant gratification and certainty that comes with digital.
I love taking long-time exposures, so I wanted to dedicate an article to this topic. But how to begin? I sat down and racked my brain. Tell you what’s so special about night photography? Mention the difficulties, explain the challenges? Try to give technical advice? Talk about the influence of the weather? Well… In the past, I already discussed these issues in my article about night photography on CineStill film. Better not to repeat all of this. Eventually I decided, I would venture a different approach this time. So I went spelunking my Lightroom catalogue and chose 18+1 frames I wanted to present. The oldest image dates back to 2016, the newest one is from early spring this year. You are now going to read a short story on each photograph.
When this film arrived from Analogue Wonderland I was stoked. A friend had brought back a roll from Japan last year and we all know about the ever decreasing lines of film coming out of Fujifilm so getting another chance to shoot it was great.
As you may recall, my initial attempts at star trails on film were with my Olympus OM1 and Fuji Natura 1600 in early 2019. The results with the 35mm film and camera were a little hit and miss, but they were promising enough that I was encouraged to keep trying, and wanted to try again with medium format. I fulfilled my desire in October of 2019 – this is the story of that experience.
I have the privilege of travelling for work to the Central West of New South Wales twice a year. After hours are typically my own, and I usually take those opportunities for photography. The night after night of clear and dark skies out there are wonderful for star gazing (though I can never help thinking of the heartache of the drought ravaged farmers praying for rain clouds). I usually shoot digital for very low light photography, such as astrophotography landscapes. There is really no other easy way to get a landscape at EV-5 and the Milky Way core above both acceptably lit and sharp in a single frame capture.
