Tag Archives: night

Street Sign

Posted on by Bill Chance
Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive

Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive

Phoenix pushed back on his chair and leaned up against the rough brick wall. He grinned and watched the woman work her way through the bar, staring at every customer, one by one. She was obviously looking for someone. He was the only person in the place by himself – and he wanted to see what happened when she reached his spot. She glanced his way a few times, and it didn’t take long for her to clear the nearest table and look down at him. He willed his face into its most relaxed, nonchalant expression – something he took pride in and had worked on for years.

“Excuse me, but I’ve arranged a meeting here with someone I’ve never seen in person… are you Brett?”

“Why, yes… yes I am. Glad to meet you.” Phoenix had not even had time to think about the lie… it simply came out. And now… nothing to do except go with it. He put on his biggest, broadest smile and reached out his hand toward the woman.

Instead of taking it, she scooted back about half a step and reached into that cavernous bag she carried.

Phoenix had enough time to think, “Oh, that’s why she has such a large purse,” but not much more as the woman’s hand flashed out with a gigantic chrome plated revolver. She raised it and Phoenix’s brain noticed how it gleamed in the uneven light of the bar. He couldn’t do anything else, though. Propped in the chair like that, he was trapped, it would take at least two or three seconds to tip forward and leap one way or the other… but he had less than one.

The gun roared as the woman kept pulling the trigger and slug after slug pumped out and into Phoenix’s chest at point-blank range.

—- from The Smeebage Affair, by Armando Vitalis

The Bus

Posted on by Bill Chance

I sat around in the bus station for a while but the people depressed me so I took my suitcase and went out in the rain and began walking.
—-Charles Bukowski, Factotum

Downtown Dallas at Night, (Click to Enlarge)

Downtown Dallas at Night, (Click to Enlarge)

Ride a city bus at night. Late at night. Look around. Really look around. Don’t read your book, don’t check your phone, don’t turn away.

Look at the people. Open your pores and let the pure atmosphere of despair and regret inside where it will knead your soul. Feel the exhaustion of going home from the night shift. Touch the grease spot on the window where people that can’t even find the energy to keep their heads upright fall. Breath in the ghosts of ancient alcohol and unwashed perspiration. Listen to the giggling and proud talk of the night denizens on their blowzy way home from a night of exhausted carousing. Feel their desperate intoxicated love.

Let yourself enter the mysterious world.

Later, maybe a week later, or a month, or years later, late at night – when you are at home on your prescription mattress and breathing that conditioned – carefully purified and modified – air wafting from ductwork overhead. When you have set your book down on the nightstand after a particularly satisfying chapter. When the glowing red digits indicate you have a good, restful, eight hours before you start mashing the snooze button. When the large, high definition, flat-screen television that you carefully positioned so that you can see it from your bed is showing the double-plays, strikeouts, and home runs from all over the country. When you begin to nod off and feel the dreams welling up….

the people on the late night buses are still there. You are home and so are they. They are still there. They are always there.

Blood Red Streaks

Posted on by Bill Chance

’twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
Come in, she said,
I’ll give you shelter from the storm.
—–Bob Dylan, Shelter From the Storm

Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive

Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive (click to enlarge)

Crankcase oil drippings leave grease spots on the tarmac. The Texas summer profligate heat splits the pavement like an overripe tomato. But it’s night now and the humidity hums and settles over the earth. The browning grass still has a little green to give up.

Time smears the taillights into blood read streaks – claret smears – ephemeral neon tubes projected onto the light detector. Effects you can’t see with your eyes appear in the little screen.

And in the other lane, headlights leave a blazing aurora. Brilliant luminous lines.

These are always there – but you don’t ever notice them – hidden by time, too busy keeping things from running into each other.

“Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality.”
― Immanuel Kant

Under the Sculpture

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

In front of the Dallas Museum of Art, night, long exposure

In front of the Dallas Museum of Art, night, long exposure (click to enlarge)

The sculpture is Ave, by Mark di Suvero – the same sculptor that did the Proverb piece not too far away.

“The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

They say you are not to touch the works of art. But I always used to see kids using the sloping steel structure – the one painted bright red in the middle of the preternatural green grass sward in front of the museum – as a slide. I don’t see that any more – security must be better.

But still I think of a slide when I see it – I think of the time we used a wax paper cup to lubricate an old, rusty piece of playground equipment down at the end of the block when I was ten years old. It became so smooth and frictionless…

The feeling of rocketing down that perilous slippery slope was intoxicating and frightening. The exhilaration was accelerated by the knowledge that we had figured it out and done it ourselves. We felt we were the only children in the world to understand the secret effects of rubbing wax paper cups on smooth steel.

A father came to fetch his kids and we boasted of how fast it was. Fathers were competitive then and he said it couldn’t be that fast because were were only little kids and we didn’t know what we were talking about.

It told him to try it. With a wry, dismissive grin he hauled his creaking, awkward bulk up the ladder much too small for him (I remember him as being oh so old, though now, of course, he would have been maybe thirty years younger than I am now) and sat bumbling down, unsure suddenly of the whole endeavor, giant feet reaching down the smooth steel – I remember a sudden, last look of doubt, almost panic flickering like a shadow across his expression… but fathers were stubborn then and there could be no turning back, no chickening out in front of his children and all their friends.

So he pushed off.

And you know what happened. I remember he shot off the end of that slide like a watermelon seed squeezed between your thumb and index finger on a hot summer afternoon.

That weekend his oldest kid told me he had to go to the hospital because he broke his coccyx.

Ghosts of Pedestrians

Posted on by Bill Chance

On Thursday, I spotted an event that was going on down at Klyde Warren Park at eight in the evening. There was a free concert by Paul Thorn. I checked out his youtube page and thought it might be interesting. It wasn’t really my type of music – but he seemed to be a talented and interesting songwriter.

After work, I was way too tired – but I didn’t want to waste another evening flopping around the house, so I pulled myself together and went down to the train station.

Unfortunately, the music was not to my liking – live, with his full band it was way too country-rock for me. I had hoped it would be more in the vein of acoustic songwriter country folk-rock – but this was full on boot-scooting country pop-rock – probably my least favorite genre of music.

I stuck for awhile, then set off walking. After stopping by the reading area and looking through an art book of odd and disturbing (I liked them) paintings by Balthus (the streetlights are almost bright enough for reading) I cruised by the food trucks (right now, we are especially broke, so I ate leftovers before going downtown) and then turned to walk back to the train station.

I had my camera and, on a whim, did some shots of traffic and people by resting my camera on a concrete pillar or whatnot – and adjusting the f-stop for long exposures.

The results were a happy surprise. I came up with a half-dozen that I liked (I’ll put them up here over time – sorry to subject y’all to my experiments). More importantly, It is a technique that shows some promise. Now, I need to work on some spots and do the shots with a tripod and remote release – to get a bit more flexibility in the shot and sharpness in the background. Maybe I can add some models, some added light, or possibly some stacked shots.

So, despite the music not being to my taste, the evening wasn’t wasted.

Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Pearl

Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Pearl

While I had my camera sitting on a low concrete wall in front of the Chase Tower in Downtown Dallas, a saw a family of three crossing at the light, coming toward me. I pointed the camera toward the street and triggered the shutter into a long exposure as they passed.

The City at Night

Posted on by Bill Chance

Well, I just got into town about an hour ago
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows

Are you a lucky little lady in The City of Light
Or just another lost angel…City of Night
—-LA Woman, The Doors

Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Pearl

Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Pearl

Dallas Skyline at Night

Posted on by Bill Chance

You can’t take a photograph of a city at night. The eyes see things the lens never dreams about.

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.
—-Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

skyline
(click for a larger version on Flickr)

“I love the silent hour of night, for blissful dreams may then arise, revealing to my charmed sight what may not bless my waking eyes.”
― Anne Brontë, Best Poems of the Brontë Sisters

I woke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain’t it funny how the night moves
When you just don’t seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in
—-Bob Seger, Night Moves

Symmetry

Posted on by Bill Chance

Night (La Nuit)by Aristide Maillol

On the free family days at the Nasher, it’s tough to get people not to touch the sculptures. Also, a lot of folk like to pose by the statues in mocking or strange positions. It’s a little aggravating, though I have to admit, I’m guilty of that myself.

From Heidi’s Do-All Blog – Strange Day at the Nasher

Plaza of the Americas, DART Station at Night

Posted on by Bill Chance

DART train at the Plaza of the Americas (click to enlarge)