Vibrant Night: Light Painting Photos of Nature Areas: Texas Selections

Although I have been doing daytime landscape photography for decades, my primary focus in the last several years has been the type of long exposure light painting depicted in my body-of-work, The Vibrant Night.... In this series, I strive to unleash the potential colors of night in ways and places not commonly seen. Most night landscape photography, if not black and white, uncloaks the dark in muted colors. But I try to show it not merely for what it is, but for what it could be: I aim to unmask the hidden potential for an otherworldly beauty by using applied light. A bit hyperreal, but not too far removed from what was there. To do this, I have developed my own style of light painting photography involving lights of different color temperatures or passed through filters to coax tonality and saturation from different areas of the subject so it harmonizes with existing natural or artificial lights. To bring out its full potential, I do extensive post-processing. My aim is to create a subtle visual fantasia – one both familiar and strangely beautiful, if not beautifully apocalyptic(!), at once. I take joy in the transformative nature of this approach, with its potential to reveal latent colors and tones, to unveil what lies hidden beneath the surface. It enables me to bring a different point of view to a beautiful place. Or, even to find beauty in what otherwise might pass as ordinary. These are my goals. So come with me on a strange, long night’s journey into the day. There, I try to capture the variable moods of Mother Nature, including those where her powerful vibrancy metaphorically depicts (to me) that she is a mysterious but strong Gaian force not to be fooled with. Yes, we can change her, however she won’t miss us a bit if – in our hubris – we cause changes that lead to our demise. As Sara Teasdale’s famous poem, “There Will Come Soft Rains,” puts it: Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.