Night Visions: UrbEx Photography by Troy Paiva

We are pleased to announce that Mr. Troy Paiva, an ace photographer and Telstar Logistics Strategic Associate, has a lovely new book out.  It's called "Night Visions: The Art of Urban Exploration," and it's quite gorgeous.

Troy, as you may recall, specializes in taking long-exposure photographs at night that depict decaying buildings, abandoned military bases, ruined cars, and dead airplanes along America's West Coast.

Troy pioneered an esoteric form of photographic kung-fu that he calls "light painting." The basic formula for light painting combines 1 part cool location with a shot of full-moonlight and a sprinkle of low-power flashlight. Troy clicks the shutter, then adds plenty of time to create spooky, spectral images which have lots of texture and detail.

Notably absent from the mix, however, is any touch of Photoshoppery or HDR saturaphonics. What you see is what Troy saw when he was standing for hours in the middle of some godforsaken, desolate, and thoroughly wonderful wasteland in the middle of the night.

We know this because we've gone out shooting with him.  In fact, we were there when Troy took this photo at Byron Hot Springs, an abandoned health spa and World War II prisoner-of-war camp near Altamont, California:

... and we will attest to the fact that this as-found scene was exactly as surreal in realtime as it looks in his image. The photo just makes it more so.

Troy introduced us to Byron Hot Springs, and in the true spirit of strategic alliance, we are proud in the knowledge that we introduced him to some nifty places too.  Notice, for example, this photograph that Telstar Logistics took in 2005:

And notice how much better Troy made it look when he visited a few months later:

Like we said: strong kung-fu.

The advent of good digital SLR cameras, combined with the onset of photo social-networking sites like the Flickr, have given Troy a big creative boost in recent years, and now some of his greatest hits have been compiled in one gorgeous new book published by Chronicle Books. We recently ordered our copy from the Amazon, the book arrived last week, and today we are very happy to endorse it.

LINKS:

"Night Visions: The Art of Urban Exploration," with photographs by Troy Paiva (Amazon.com link)

Lost America (Troy Paiva's Flickr photostream)

PREVIOUSLY:

Late Night with Troy Paiva

Psssst! Who Wants to Buy a Used Boeing 747, CHEAP?

(IMAGES: All nighttime photos by Troy Paiva. Daytime photo by Telstar Logistics.)

Comments

[Joey B]

I was trying to see what other airframes might be around the area on Google Maps and saw the airport. Any idea what the story is with those four black/dark blue jets at the far north-west end of the ramp? They look like L-29s or L-39s, but it's hard to tell from that resolution.

[Telstar Logistics]

Joey, you can see my daytime shots of AvWarehouse here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/telstar/sets/1449754/