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DAILY FLICKR PICKR DAY 542

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!) There are a lot of things I like about a long-exposure photograph at night.

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!)

There are a lot of things I like about a long-exposure photograph at night. For starters, the film or sensors in our cameras record light accumulatively - as opposed to our eyes, which constantly refresh to allow us to see in real time - and this results in the photograph's ability to reveal details that are invisible to the human eye. Secondly, I am really interested in the idea of a camera as a tool to measure time: at one end of the spectrum it can freeze a millisecond and capture that moment forever, yet at the other it can measure longer durations of time. Last but not least, you get really strange looks from passersby who see your tripod and camera, look off in the direction that the camera is aiming then look at you as if to wonder why you would possibly want a photo of that. Which is actually kind of fun.

With this in mind I enjoyed viewing a photograph in the pool by John Whitworth that checks off all the items on my above list. Surely the sky was darker in person and the clouds not nearly as visible, and the thirty-second exposure undeniably captures a lot of interesting temporal information. I mean, those blinking wing lights are fantastic! As far as people giving John strange looks for practicing night photography at this particular location, I'm sure that most people would understand the appeal at YVR at Night.

Gary