Ruben Pagan - Aline Smithson - 2018 Dark Nights Exhibition, Part 1 & 2

Although each of these images was submitted by different photographers, most of them had similar technical choices that I found important. I very much appreciate the use of ambient lights and no usage of set up lights brought into these environments. Keeping the scenes natural, for me, is the best way to do it. Capturing the world and lights as they are in their respective environments makes these images more immersive. That is because it allows us to focus on the setting and the world inside of the image and it allows one to possibly even forget about the photographer due to the fact that their is no visible manipulation from their part.

I believe that some of the artists' conceptual intentions was to actually just capture the eerie world of the night-life. We often forget that night time can be just as active as day-time, but just in different ways. Sure, many different things may occur between the two. For example, at night more of people's actions become more confined to individual activities or smaller groups of people. Where as in the day-time, we interact more with people outside of our circles simply while we go about our daily business. Night and day differ in some ways yet in others they are fairly similar. I think that these images do a good job at showing similarities and differences between the world of night and day.

I know I chose A LOT of photos from this exhibition put together by Aline Smithson, but I couldn't choose a small amount. These images are absolutely beautiful to me due to the fact that I love night shots/long exposures at night. The way that night shots depend specifically on sources of light for them to function is always intriguing to me. Light already dictates everything we see with our own eyes, and even in day-time shots of course, but there's something about night shots that just makes them feel even more dictated by light. Night photos also convey a strong sense of mood and being able to place yourself in the shoes of the subject/photographer more easily than most other styles in my eyes.