Creative Assignment 1

Artist’s Statement

Since the day I first started learning how to make photographs, I have been interested in night photography. The true capabilities of a camera shine once the sun goes down and darkness persists. To have the ability to view life, not moment by moment as our eyes do, but to rather extend one frame to last for several seconds, minutes or hours, can truly change the way that you view the world. Whether it was capturing the stars twinkling in the night sky, or capturing the dancing lights of a bustling city I have been fascinated by it for a long time now. 

  When I first saw Stephen Wilkes’ Day to Night Series, I was struck with awe. He took that ability capture the night as many moments in one frame and applied it to the whole day. He created a seamless composition that represented an entire day at a given location. His idea was simple but revolutionary.

  My goal was to replicate that same idea: to seamlessly blend the day into night. I took a process that occurs over several hours and composited it into one frame. With slowly but constantly changing lighting conditions, I had to make several adjustments to exposure throughout the evenings I spent taking the photographs I used for this project. I started at a shutter speed of several hundredths of a second in the afternoon and ended with it at several seconds. Throughout, I kept my aperture relatively small to capture a wider depth of field, given the landscape/cityscape nature of my photographs. When I was done shooting, I took all of my photos into Photoshop and through an editing process, created two day to night composites. By using these methods, I believe I was successfully able to achieve my goal of seamlessly blending the day into the night.