Toby Keller - Night Photography Blog

Call us dirty hippies if you like…

But god damn do we know how to blow some fucking shit UP!

It was a good burn.

Video by Vanessa Valentino

Featured at Wallblank

Wallblank offers new limited edition art every day. Today they’re featuring one of my works ("Carnival, 2008") - you can pick up a 12"x18" print for the ridiculously low price of $29 (edition of 100). It will be available for sale for one week, so check it out! Carnival on Wallblank

Aerial Series

As if I didn’t have enough different threads of work going on at the same time, here’s another! I find myself on planes rather often, and have flown over some wild country lately - the Great Salt Lake, the Grand Canyon, the mountains of Oregon and Washington…

Mount Hood, Oregon

Great Salt Lake, Utah

Unknown mountains, Utah

Great Salt Lake, Utah

Great Salt Lake, Utah

I’ll post more on my Flickr and Behance portfolios soon.

What I’m Working On: Parking Garages Remix

Sometimes, it pays to screw around. While shooting a new parking garage I found, I was taking a hand held “test shot” just to see what the framing and exposure would look like. I accidentally left the camera on “B”, and started turning while the shutter was open - what I got was useless, but intriguing! An hour later I had a bunch of new studies on the CF card. I’m still developing the idea, but I think it’s got possibilities…

Brent Pearson: Night Photography & Light Painting

Brent Pearson is a friend of mine and also one of my favorite night photographers. He is constantly pushing his own boundaries - and thankfully for the rest of us, meticulously documenting the process! His blog is full of interesting tidbits from his night photography and light painting experiments, and he is very candid about his processes.

I was excited, then, to get my hands on a pre-release copy of his new eBook, Night Photography & Light Painting. This is a fantastic resource for new night photographers and old hands alike. I definitely learned some new tricks to try out. The eBook has 86 pages of Brent’s amassed knowledge of shooting at night, from equipment to scouting locations to post processing.... If you’re interested in light painting there are detailed instructions on how to build your own killer lighting contraptions. Brent also includes a large number of before and after photos, showing the steps that go into a multiple exposure light painting image.

Full disclosure: Brent included a few of my images in the introductory section of the book, which was very nice of him, but totally incidental to the rest of the book. It’s so full of useful info I suggest you go over and buy this book if you are at all interested in pushing your night photography forward!

Night Moves at Safe-T-Gallery, Brooklyn

Almost forgot to mention: I have three photos going up at the Safe-T-Gallery in Dumbo (Brooklyn) on March 5th. After a taxing adventure trying to get four very large photos framed, crated and shipped to NYC, they arrived in good shape, and next week Jade and I will fly out for the opening. It’ll be nice to see how the 20"x30" prints look under the gallery lights. Check it out if you’ll be in the area, the show will stay up until April 11.

From the Safe-T-Gallery site:

[in this show] the photographers explore both the densely illuminated urban landscape and the stark all-natural world at night, as well as the deliciously ambiguous spaces in between.

And these are the photos I will have in the show: