When it comes to taking spooky nighttime shots of ghost towns, abandoned military posts, and antiquated drive-ins, nobody captures them with better efficiency and realism than photographer Noel Kerns. His idiosyncratic method of imaginatively employing various colored lights coupled with pristine moonlight, - commonly known as light painting - lends a lifelike aura to the old, neglected, forgotten places, and makes them appear as vivid nightscapes.
When Noel Kerns was asked about his quirky haunting nighttime portraits, he narrated a captivating anecdote that almost had a tinge of a photographer's take on the famous and eagerly pursued “American Dream”: “I began making photographs of abandonments at night back in the summer of 2007, and sharing my work on Flickr. Interest in my photos began to grow as people in the Flickr community saw and re-shared my work. It started out as a purely organic process. I never actively marketed myself or my work in any way, but I began to get requests for prints, gallery showings and, ultimately, in the fall of 2010, an e-mail from Carpet Bombing Culture in the United Kingdom requesting to do a book of my work.”
Going by the stupendous quality of Kerns' pictures, his quote above shouldn't come as a surprise to many. Mr. Kerns prefers using the Nikon D80 or D300 for capturing most of his shots and absolutely swears by the superior output produced by these two cameras in keeping with the kind of effect he constantly strives to bring about in his photographs.
Some of his typical methods include utilizing flashlights, strobes, and various colored gels to strategically infuse extra light in a shot. Another of his quirky traits involves shooting the final output in-camera during exposures that continue for an average duration of one to three minutes. This saves him immense time and effort during post-production, and at times no post-production is needed at all, owing to the superlative clarity and precise detailing of the shots captured.
Let's take a look at some of Noel Kerns' most famous light painted nightscape images.
You can check out more of his work, this is his Flickr account .