black

By Therese Iknoian

Milky Way at Pemaquid Lighthouse, Maine

Turning my head upward to gaze at the stars sparkling above, I inhale the night deeply. Hello, I’m home. Then I go about setting up my camera gear, a routine that has somehow become comforting even with the omnipresent anxiousness about what the night’s sky will bring and what photographic dreams will be realized – or frustrated.

Although black may represent a struggle between good and bad, happy and sad, or certainly and doubt, for me it represents a clean palette waiting to be filled by the colors of the night. Since black is the absorption of all colors, it is in reality no color and yet every color. You just have to coax them out. From an urban jungle with hurry-hurry people and cars, to redwood forests filled with mystery and deep silence, to mountains and seasides with unending views of stars, the night and its blackness offer hope and peace. You have not experienced a place until you have seen its blackness.

As a night photographer, discovering what can be pulled from the black after most people have put away their cameras and called it a day is always a challenge. I love the simplicity of stars and the beauty of a Milky Way, but I particularly enjoy capturing the energy that exists in a place or a story that can be told. I am pulled out into the black of night again and again, seeking to look beyond the blackness to its many colors. Hello, I’m home.

Light Painting 3 Brothers Graves, Nevada; Berlin Christmas Market Ferris Wheel; Desert X Palm Springs Light Paint; Star Trails over Lone Pine Peak, California