Noctography - What is it?

My name is Chris Benbow and i am a Night photographer. I am also known at [Nocturne] by most for my photography which can be seen on My Flickr I shoot nearly exclusively at night time in abandoned places. I have been a Night Photographer for a few years now and have developed my own style and invented my own word for it, Noctography. I decided to invent the word Noctography because i was so passionate about it. A lot of Night Photographers are already using it and I am hoping the word gets used so frequently that it becomes an official word in the english dictionary and I am credited and appreciated for the creation of the word.

Noctography involves taking photographs at night. Noctography can help capture things that your eyes can’t see. I use light painting to create a scene that you can’t see until the images has been taken. Light painting is a technique where you are using a flashgun or torch with coloured gels to ‘light paint’ inside of objects or buildings. I have perfected the technique over a few years and i feel like i have it down to an art now, but there is still room for learning and mistakes though.

Finding the places i go to usually takes a lot of internet research, driving around, discussing locations with other night photographers and even interesting phone conversations with owners of properties to gain permission for access to some of these places. Noctography is not a lonely hobby as my girlfriend and a few good friends who i go out with regularly to abandoned places to shoot at night so it becomes quite a social occasion.

Star Trails are another big part of Noctography. Leaving the camera taking a picture for about an hour can leave us with some spectacular results as we can see from these few pictures. While the earth rotates on it’s axis and the light from the stars produce their trail on to the image.