Shots in the dark
Larrie Thomson's night photography is an adventuresome foray into a world of surreal beauty
Sheila Thistlethwaite - March 26, 2007
Dodging bullets in a ghost town in the Mojave Desert, climbing the eight-foot-high fence of an ancient abandoned power plant to escape a gang of criminals searching for him with flashlights--it's all in a night's work for Alberta-based night photographer Larrie Thomson--and he got out of there as fast as his rusty 1981 Dodge van would take him.
His images of falling-down buildings, deserted industrial sites and lonely landscapes have attracted thousands of fans--first in the U.K., then in the U.S., and now locally. A professional photographer for many years, Thomson worried he might get "stuck in a box, taking wedding and baby pictures" and began experimenting with taking photographs in the dark in 1999, "when there was only a handful of night photographers worldwide," he says.
"I'm fascinated with ghost towns and wide open, abandoned territory," he says of his choice of subject matter. His photographs have appeared on covers and within the pages of magazines around the world, and have made his website, nightphotographer.com, a top draw since its launch in 2000, with as many as 900 visits a day. "I think night is the only way to see those places. The ghosts are a lot more willing to tell their stories under the moonlight," he says.
His trusty "Starving Artist Van" has taken the 43-year-old photographer on road trips around western Canada and as far south as the Mexican border, scouting locations by day, then taking photographs from sundown to sunup. He travels alone and rarely encounters trouble. "Most places are so remote I might not speak to anyone for days," he says.
Thomson avoids bright sources of artificial light, such as street lamps. Lens flare is a big problem at night, but Thomson says you can incorporate it, making the image "less perfect but more real--it adds to the emotion of the picture." He likes shooting in black and white, and also often "paints" a scene using coloured lighting.
Remarkably, until last year all his photographs were taken with a generic 35-mm camera he'd bought in 1981. Shooting by starlight demands exposures up to 20 minutes long; until recently, digital cameras did not offer that capability.
Viewers often find it hard to believe the surreal-looking photos on his website haven't been manipulated. The website is a portal into a dreamlike world, presented in a way that seems almost like a TV show, owing perhaps to Thomson's experience as a TV cameraman, which he says gave him his "photographic instinct--you need to think on your feet." Visitors to the website can choose from several galleries, and each photo is accompanied by an anecdote about the shot, such as when a gang of boys arrived in the middle of the night to vandalize the buildings of an abandoned Saskatchewan town Thomson was photographing. Suddenly appearing on the empty street with the moonlight at his back, Thomson says he "scared the crap out of them. I don't know what they thought they saw, but I believe they think they saw a ghost." The boys jumped into their car and sped away. Thomson continued shooting until dawn.
Primarily self-taught, Thomson now finds himself teaching audiences of as many as 200 hobbyists and professionals how to shoot at night. But the bread and butter of his photography trade lies in commercial licensing of his unique portfolio for uses as varied as publication in periodicals and on other websites, to an 8-by-12-foot backdrop for a climate change display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. While he sells custom prints from his website, he'd like to see more of his images in art galleries and perhaps in a book.
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