photo sharing and upload picture albums photo forums search pictures popular photos photography help login
Alister Benn & Juanli Sun | all galleries >> Lightscapes > Midnight
previous | next
Midnight
September 2004 alibenn

Midnight

Banff

This shot was taken in Banff National Park in Alberta Canada in September 2004. I was there for 5 days and it is where I first started taking landscape images. This is a familiar view of Mt Rundle from Vermilion Lake, but by shooting at midnight under a full moon the scene is transformed into an ethereal wonderland. I love this image, but it is technically flawed. I shot at f6.3 for 30 seconds when I could have shot at f4 for 15 seconds. The image is soft because it was a little under-exposed and the digital noise needed to be reduced with Neat Image: http://www.neatimage.com/

It was a magnificent night though, the lakeside had been thronged with photographers at sunset, but at midnight, my wife and I were alone for a wonderful few hours. this image really turned me on to landscapes at night...


other sizes: small medium original
post a comment
Sun Han 18-Aug-2006 14:59
this is a scene of my dreamland
Glyn Curtis 11-Apr-2006 23:03
Flawed? This image is fantastic under exposed or not. Good job and yes it would look good on a poster, I'd buy it!!
Vipin Mayer 06-Jan-2006 00:04
This is something iŽd love to see in a big size poster,excellent shot ,and beautiful landscape.
Alister Benn & Juanli Sun 30-Jul-2005 11:39
It was a full moon, and very pretty too, and cold!! I got away with a large aperture as the nearest reeds are about 15-20 feet away. I used manual focus for this and just guaged through the viewfinder when I thought it was sharp, I'd had a bottle of red wine though, so maybe not too accurate!!

This image is not as sharp as I would like now, I would do it differently next time, but as it was in my first week of landscapes and such an amazing night, i still love it. It prints out fine at 12 x 6
Kal Khogali 30-Jul-2005 10:34
Primal is what it is Alister. I read the background to how you got this image. I assume tis was a full moon night? You used a relatively low f number. How did you focus/ Or do you set it to infinity for such a shot in the dark? At it's original size this is pin sharp.
Barri Olson 14-Jul-2005 03:48
I think this is a very primal image. An image of a someplace we all share, yet individually...a place of tranquillity and silence where the soul can be alone.
Phil Douglis 10-May-2005 06:27
Marek is right, Alister. This image does indeed transport us to a far away place deep in our imaginations, and because you have sized it this large, it can do so with much greater immediacy than when we saw it in very small form. It is amazing what larger scale presentation can do for detail, mood, and meaning, and you have shown us that here.
Daniella T. 28-Feb-2005 05:48
wow, mystical, heteral? just magical landscape and you captured it so well!
m 11-Dec-2004 21:26
Aha! I meet with Phil and Clara. I share their appreciation of the image's painterly qulaity, and would like to add something to Phil's comment that this images conveys your feelings about the scene. I think a measure of a great landscape image is when it transports the viewer to somewhere else than just the physical location it shows. This image does just that.
Lisson 11-Dec-2004 02:52
This is the other of three shots that have impressed me from your galleries, although I have to say that your B/W is all very much great art. This one has a marvellous atmosphere. You know how to compose, have beautiful use of color and intuition. If you explore unusual paths within photography, your work will become outstanding, since you have the mentioned qualities and already considerable skill (vastly more than me, for example). You could become a professional today. Just run away the conventions. This shot is a good direction to go further. My best regards. Clara.
Phil Douglis 11-Dec-2004 01:20
Of all your landscapes, both in color and black and white, this one stirs my imagination the most, Alister. Why? Because it is the most abstract and incongruous. It leaves more to the imagination. It not just another fine, yet predictable descriptions of a natural scene. It goes beyond illustration to envision a ghostly, surreal scene. It tells me more about how you feel about the scene than any of your other landscapes. Its color palette is not as predictable, either -- Nature's ghost's hover around us in this long time exposure. If an owl were to come sweeping through this wideangle perspective, it would not surprise me.

This image caused me to do a double take. When I first saw it, it seemed as if it was offering us more fantasy than the reality, a product as much of Photoshop, as of the camera. Which is fine, because your images are your art, and you can make that art in any fashion you wish. When I looked at it again and noted your exposure data, I concluded that this image is indeed a realty -- but a strange and unusual reality only witnessed at midnight by a camera over a 30 second time period. This image shows us what our own eyes could not see -- the incongruous magic of accumulated light in a remote and wondrous place.

It has been cropped and edited to carry the eye through and around the horizontal frame. My only suggestion would to post this, and all of your pbase images, in a much larger size. Sized at 800 to 1,000 pixels across, its detail would become much more evident and potentially meaningful.
Jim Thiel 10-Dec-2004 03:13
This is a terrific image. We went to Banff, Jasper and Glacier this past September. What a beautiful spot for sure. Nice job.