Color Night Photography

Color Night Photography… this is my story of an unlikely outcome.

For anyone who knows me, you’ll know how obsessed I am with black & white photography; particularly b&w film photography.

One night I decided to go downtown, but instead of shooting film I opted to take a digital camera, my Leica M262 with a 35mm lens. I went out mainly just to get out of the apartment. Figured I’d shoot some digital shots and most likely convert them to b&w in Lightroom. That’s what I usually would do.

The Night Began

I left the apartment and arrived downtown just before 8pm. Just before sunset. That’s really my favorite time to shoot. There’s a little bit of light in the sky, but it’s dark enough that the lights have come on; the downtown Vegas neon has been beautifully lit.

Color Night Photography in Unlikely Places. — The Beautiful Back Alleys of Vegas

I walked up and down the streets and the alleys for probably an hour and a half or more. I really enjoyed it. Hadn’t been doing much of that kind of photography in the past couple years, and much of the area had changed a bit. New street art in the back alleys. Some renovation done to start repurposing some of the old motels of the downtown area. And the weather was perfect (not too hot).

Repurposing some of the old abandoned motels of downtown. — Color, who knew…

Time To Go Home

Eventually made my way back to the car and headed home to look at the images I had just created.

I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the computer. I pulled the files into Lightroom and started going through them. And that’s when it happened.

Color

This has happened to me a couple times before. I’ll have shot digital photos, even with the preview on the back of the camera set to b&w. But then when I see the color that’s in the DNG file… I love it. It can’t be denied. Whether I like it or not, I can’t deny how much impact the photos make with color.

I ended up processing all the ones that I liked in color. The beauty of the color photos impacted me so much. So, the next couple times I went out at night with a camera, I did the same thing. I shot digital; purposely looked for beautiful color scenes; and processed the files producing color photographs that I really love.

It’s even evident that I’m enjoying color by the recent featured photo I’ve added to my homepage.