About Jeff:
Jeff is a New Jersey based night photographer who specializes in long exposure and light-painted images in both digital and film, using traditional medium format and digital film processes. He has shown his work in galleries and been selected for juried shows throughout the region, including shows in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, and for the last five years, at the Lupine Gallery in Monhegan, Maine. His work is in numerous private collections including that of renowned painter Jamie Wyeth.
Jeff also runs the only night-photography specific Meetup in New York City, helping night photographers to meet up for shoots and occasionally gain access to locations that require shooting permits, such as Grand Central Terminal. He has assisted with photography workshops run by National Parks at Night and at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, and also runs his own workshops nationally and internationally to help people find their own creative visions. Jeff has an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and has developed site-specific projection-mapping video projects as well as working in theatrical performance lighting, both of which contribute to his interest in finding the most creative ways to illuminate subjects in his photography. Night photography gives him a chance to see the world differently - to focus on the quiet solitude of light and shadow and the beauty of textures, varying color palettes, and shapes. His work uses long exposure, flashlights, and light trails to explore the intersection of light, time, and form.
Right now he enjoys shooting with a Canon 5D Mark IV, a Hasselblad 500cm, and a Agfa Isolette III. Please feel free to check out his work at his facebook page or at his etsy store and if you need some light modifiers or some of his books you can check out his store here.
What is light painting though?
Shooting at night creates a special challenge for photographers. Images that capture the sky or stars typically leave the land in darkness. Very long-exposure shots (lasting several minutes) expose the land properly but turn the stars into trails of light as they move around the North Star - an interesting but not always desirable effect.
For the last few years, I have been exploring a technique called "light painting" in my night photography, which involves selecting certain elements of the foreground and "painting" those elements with flashlights during a shot that lasts no more than a few moments. This allows for interesting experiments with angles of light, and is a means to draw the viewer's attention to different portions of the image, the way a painter might highlight elements of a painting. Rather than Photoshopping together my images, I can use this technique to capture the stars the way they really were at a particular time and place.
You can review the examples to the right to see what adding lighting can do to an image.
Image 1: Properly exposed for the night sky but the forground is too dark.
Image 2: Properly exposed for the foreground the sky becomes overexposed.
Image 3: Here the images is properly exposed for the sky but a flashlight has been added ot illuminate the foreground to provide detail and interest