Stay Centered, USA, 2008
What is silentfoto?
Certain subjects and aspects that come about through the qualities produced in long exposure night photography work. The resulting image often possesses a stylistic quality. Other than that I'm not sure. An aesthetic? One guy praised me for my skills with cgi after I exhibited some of my silentfoto work at a local cafe. I probably tweaked the levels in LR a tad. Beyond this only a camera and tripod where involved. The above is a prime example of the silentfoto aesthetic from a Night Industrial collection. It was taken under part of a freeway maze in Oakland. I think the exposure was 30 seconds at 100 iso. There is no sense of normal, observable time to the scene and object (okay, there is a tail light streak - ignore), it's waiting in the darkness, inert, obsolete. It is in a time like that out in the universe - in slow, immeasurable stretches, often referred to a timeless. We do judge time by change, change by perceptible movement. Ironically I can see the the elevated highway decks and the rail track as 3 twisted clock hands extending from their centre point, the tanker. The thing about long-exposure work that dazzles me is how it uses illumination (to produce a certain quality) not through correct light strength but through the accumulation & subsequent compression of light over time on the electronic sensor. Aside from softening the image, the colours from this incidental sources of illumination are all the more vivid.
