Roam at Night

Another instalment in the “Roam at Night” Series. Here, it’s not about the subject and composition so much, but rather practicing the technical aspects of night photography. You know, getting the exposure right and the challenges of focusing in those conditions, and keeping noise to a minimum. Later we can apply what we’ve learned to more ambitious projects, armed with the skills needed to hit, hopefully, a couple out of the park. Till then, we wander the city, come dark, looking for things to shoot and learn from.

Documented here, a former refinery site in Calgary’s Inglewood Community. The plant operated from the 1930s-1970s. It took well into the 1980s before it was completely dismantled. For some odd reason, one small substation building was left behind. No idea why. When built it belonged to British-American Oil and later Gulf Canada. The huge site has been cleaned up and is now a park of sorts.

In this test we tackle the problem of having both a brightly and dimly lit subject together in the frame, the city skyline and the little building respectively. I think we did okay – we even got a few stars which is hard in a city environment – but at the same time lots more shooting is needed before we’re comfy and satisfied that we’re getting it down right.

Also shot at night…
The Clearwater – an operating drive-in theatre.

Short Subjects: reports that for any number of reasons are brief in nature. They might be updates to older articles, previews of posts planned or not yet published, brief snippets of things that don’t fit in anywhere else or subjects that are so obscure that information on them can’t be found. Or sometimes we just ramble on about Lord knows what.

If you need any more information on what we talked about here, by all means contact us!

Date of adventure: January, 2018.
Location: Calgary, AB.

All that remains of the old refinery in Calgary’s Inglewood Community.

The rest of the site is empty.