Wandering Around Town in the Evening

It had been a while since I ventured into town at night with a camera in hand. With warm summer nights upon us amid a rather long and oppressive heat wave, a friend and I decided to check things out this past Friday night.

With a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 sitting in the closet, I did kick around the idea of shooting the evening on film. But when I’ve attempted nighttime street photography on film in the past, my results haven’t been to my liking. There are applications when digital photography simply performs better, and I think nighttime street photography is one of them.

On our way into town just after sunset, I noticed the glint of dusk reflecting off the shiny tops of railroad tracks. I manually focused into the distance to blur out the foreground. The camera’s autofocus grabbed hold of the section of rail immediately in front of me, but my intention was to lead the eye down the railroad tracks toward the horizon. This was one obvious situation that called for manual focus mode. I also set my exposure compensation to -1 2/3 EV, which ended up being a little heavy handed considering that I later brightened this image by 2/3rds of a stop. I also made a few other minor postproduction refinements to emphasize contrast without losing too much grey tone. I did want to preserve some of the subtle details in the railroad track ties.

My inspiration was this wonderful image by Ernst Haas. I’ve always loved the way that Haas used the pair of railroad tracks to act as a series of very narrow mirrors which reflected the bold colors in the sky above. Back home, I was curious to see how this composition looked in color. Using my raw image editor, I converted this image from the original black and white—I shot entirely in monochrome that evening—to color, but doing so took away from however much stopping power this image has. My dusk skylight was not nearly as colorful and saturated as what Haas saw when he captured his photograph.

I’m always struck how familiar surroundings take on a completely different feeling at night. My wife and I have our favorite restaurants, and this one looked entirely unlike what we typically counter when we arrive there for dinner.

To prevent the glare of window glass from ruining the shot, I brought my camera lens almost in contact with the window pane.

A few steps down, a bar that is usually pretty quiet during daylight hours was bumping with activity. A band was playing just inside the front window. I immediately saw a great composition.

I am usually pretty fussy about taking control of focus, but in this case the camera’s autofocus picked out precisely what I wanted to emphasize, and its selection of aperture separated the drummer from the background.

Last month when I was wandering around town with my 135mm f/3.5 non-AI Nikkor adapted to my Canon EOS R8, I shot an image of a mannequin sitting in a storefront window. During the day, there is a strong reflection of light off the window glass. Generally speaking, I usually try to make that kind of glare a part of my composition. But at night, the same subject takes on a wholly different appearance.

Instead of natural light illuminating the subject, artificial light from above transformed this mannequin’s appearance in a rather interesting way.

Down the street, a shop filled with Moroccan wares looks far more compelling at night than during the day.

Over the entire evening, I kept my camera in program mode. In hindsight, I see that it chose aperture settings on the fast end of its range. Rather than go for longer depth of field and compensating by increasing sensitivity, it’s interesting that the camera picked a faster F-number even though its high ISO performance is very good.

All in all, it was a breath of fresh air to photograph a familiar place at night. I confess that I often feel like I am in a rut when I wander around the same place at the same time of day. Fighting off that post-dinner laziness and getting myself out there at night was invigorating. I ought to do that more often.