Night Lights | metropolis

For this shoot, I took a trip to my local town centre during the night and took various photos that exaggerated the importance of light.

I wanted to take photographs inspired by Brassai, with his tendency to focus on darkness and the vulgar things that come with it during the night in the streets of Paris. What I plan on doing is the opposite. I want to enhance the light and the comfort of the city at night, therefore I took these photographs using a slow shutter speed to ensure I capture enought light to get my point across. I focussed at the way I positioned the camera and what scenes I could use to find as many possible lights as I can. I already decided that once I had taken these photographs I would physically manipulate them in the style of Amy Friend to help me create a set of photographs that show that lighting can effect the atmosphere of a photo. By concentrating on Friend's pinhole technique, I can intensify the amount of light there is in the streets and create a pleasant atmosphere.

The darkness surrounding the lights also helps me do so due to the vast contrast it provides.

The colour of light can effect the photo's mood as artificial lighting usually takes on more blue or red tones and natural light is white or yellow. It effects the photo because using artificial light gives it a more modern and lively feeling, taking aspects of man-made lighting and providing us with a different sense of safety that we get from the creation of our society in our hometown. The photographs above all have slow shutter speed settings which allow a ghostly atmosphere from the transparent lines of light that remain after people leave. It creates a rather lonely atmosphere.

Light makes frightening scenes a lot more safe and welcoming, like the extremely bright lights above it guides us into the comfort of the city. Having a lot of light makes the mood a lot more relaxing and allows us to feel at home wherever we are.

The photographs take in the light very well and make it a look a lot brighter than it actually is due to my slower shutter speed which allows me to capture more light. I also turned the aperture up for these photographs to allow more light to be taken in. This overally created a more vivid and outstanding scene with a large amount of illuminating orbs that guide us into the comfortable city we live in.

Blue light attracts us as it is one of the most unnatural colours and acts as a symbol of liveliness and energetic nightlife and therefore wakes up the mood of the photograph by showing that although it is dark, we still live and socialise comfortably.

Yellow light is warmer and makes us more relaxed as it is the closest colour to natural light. It still provides an idea of liveliness but in the sense that we are safe to go out into the warm lit streets and still feel secure.
Other neon inspired lights also, light blue, make a more energetic atmosphere because we associate them with the neon signs of clubs or party areas in general where we are able to have fun and live in safety where as warmer and more natural looking artificial lighting is relaxing and soothing and a lot calmer than neon, unnatural lights.

I am going to experiement with the idea that the colour of light effects the mood of a photo by putting clear sheets of coloured paper behind the pinholes to allow light to carry the colour and change the atmosphere.