Tag Archives: night

A little “light” entertainment

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If you ever get to Hawaii (in particular, if you ever get to the island of Oahu), chances are you’ll wind up stopping by the Polynesian Cultural Center. It’s the #1 paid attraction in the state, after all. An adjunct of the BYU-Hawaii campus, the PCC serves a cluster of purposes — entertainment, helping college-age kids from across the Pacific pay for college, and providing some cross-cultural education.

Granted, the displays of polynesian culture at the PCC are “cleaned up” a bit (as you might expect given the circumstances), but for most visitors it’s at least a quick way to get exposure to a slice of Polynesia they wouldn’t see otherwise. The after-dinner show is also a great way to get practice photographing flaming torches:

A little

I was more than a little surprised that this shot didn’t require much noise cleanup — the torches do a great job of lighting the entertainer (just had a bit of noise in the darker background). BTW, this is a shot from the “Ha: Breath of Life” show. Great stuff for the kids…

Night along the trail

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So let’s say you take a trip to Hawaii and manage to hike out to where the lava meets the sea. Pretty spectacular, particularly at night:

Pele's workshop

But of course, you hiked there in the dark (likely) over near-black lava (certainly), and now you need to get back to your car, in the dark. Makes for a pretty tough scene unless you brought a flashlight. Luckily, though, most folks remember this little item of equipment (although you’d be surprised how many show up unprepared)

Once you’re back at the trailhead, you can take a long-exposure shot of the folks behind you on the trail:

Night along the trail

If you’re having trouble visualizing what’s going on, here’s a VERY STRETCHED shorter exposure shot from the same spot:

EB256989

Note that all the ground below the horizon is solidified lava flows, the sky is only visible here because I took this on a cloudy night. I’m still amazed at how much detail is visible in this frame…

Red alignment

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We’ve got relatives in Arizona, so occasionally when we’re visiting we get an opportunity to drop in on some local attractions. On one trip I thought I’d experiment with a long-exposure nighttime shot of one of the telescope domes at Flagstaff’s Lowell Observatory:

Red alignment

It’s odd, but once your eyes get adjusted to the lighting, you don’t particularly notice its red coloration.

City ablaze

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One of the fun things about night shots is that you can get some interesting “free” effects from the different color temperatures used in street and building lighting. This is a shot of downtown Seattle, taken from the Space Needle late at night — shortly before they chased us all off the observation deck.

City ablaze.jpg

Here, the white balance is set to make the building lights look right — resulting in orange streets. I particularly like how the monorail line is silhouetted from beneath.

Originally posted to the old blog on May 5, 2009; on Flickr over here.

Radiating shadows

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On a trip back to New Mexico, we managed to stay a night and a day in Santa Fe. After the pup was in bed, Mrs. Argos wanted a little “me time,” so I grabbed my gear and headed downtown for some night shots. I thought this play of light and shadow was interesting:

Radiating shadows.jpg

The contrast in geometry between the shadow lines and the joints between the sidewalk pavers is kind of neat too. FWIW, I did very little to this shot other than crop it a bit and desaturate it (although not completely).

Originally posted to the old blog on October 23, 2009; on Flickr over here.