Sunset and Twilight, 2006, photos by Fred Hatt

Photographers and Cinematographers sometimes use the term “magic hour” to refer to times of day when natural daylight takes on special qualities that beautify nearly any setting and imbue it with drama and grandeur.  Unfortunately the phrase is used inconsistently to refer to times just before or just after sunup or sundown.  I prefer the terms “golden hour” for those times when the sun is just above the horizon, and “blue hour” for the time of twilight, when the sun is below the horizon but the sky carries a hint of its glow.  Of course, “hour” is also imprecise, as the duration of the times of magical light depends on season and latitude.  The tropics may have warm weather all year round, but there the setting of the sun is abrupt.  In St. Petersburg or in Patagonia, on the other hand, the  sky can be numinously luminous all day long.

At the golden hour, the sun comes nearly sideways through the atmosphere, passing through significantly more air than when it comes from overhead.  This softens and diffuses the light, and absorbs many of the short (blue) wavelengths, giving it a warm golden or reddish tone.  The landscape is illuminated laterally, with raking shadows revealing the texture of surfaces and things.

Autumn Sundown, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Side lighting is particularly flattering to human subjects.  In stage lighting, illumination from the sides is usual for dance, as it emphasizes the shapes of the body.  The warm tone of late afternoon or early morning light has its own glamorizing effect, reducing harshness and making blemishes and wrinkles less visible.  The softer light doesn’t make people squint as harsh midday light does, nor does it cast dark shadows under their eyebrows and noses.

Photographer, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

When the light comes from behind through translucent things like leaves, grass, or hair, those objects glow with transmitted light, overpowering the ordinary reflected light by which we see opaque things.

Roebling Tea Room, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

When low in the sky, the sun casts shadows laterally, sometimes outlining the shapes of trees and people and things upright on walls, rather than beneath them on the ground or floor.

Studio Window, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt

Direct lateral sunlight exposes textural contours in a reddish light, while the overhead blue light diffused through the sky provides a second, softer source of light.  At a particular time these two light sources, red from the side and blue from overhead, may be almost perfectly balanced.

White Brick, 2007, photo by Fred Hatt

A golden glint and long shadows turn the plainest structures into glittering metallic facets.

Gilt Edge, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Buildings are shadowed by other buildings, and the red glow of the setting or rising sun selectively ignites the gridlike structures.

Tinged Red, 2001, photo by Fred Hatt

Just as the sun drops below the horizon, the level of daylight comes into balance with the level of artificial lights.  Buildings are illuminated both from without and from within.

Foggy Evening, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

At certain times, from certain angles of view, reflected light is more powerful than any direct light, outlining softly illuminated subjects against a sharp antipodal sheen.

Shiny Paint, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Once the sun drops below the horizon, the sky retains a diffuse ultramarine glow for some time before darkness completely overtakes the celestial vault.  Artificial lights are now dominant, but the twilight glow pervades the shadows.  Now it is is the blue hour.

Blue & White, 2008, photo by Fred Hatt

The remaining light in the sky gives every unlit thing a blue glow, while interiors and places with artificial lighting shine in warmer tones.

Pay Phones, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

The sky is blue, sodium vapor streetlamps are reddish, incandescent bulbs yellowish, fluorescent lights greenish.

Manhattan Bridge Anchorage, 2009, photo by Fred Hatt

The photo below is taken while there was a twilight blue glow in the sky.  Fifteen minutes later, and the women would have been silhouettes against the artificially lit background.

Smoothies - Salads, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Wet streets reflect the sky, so the blue glow comes from below as well as above.

Rain & Steam, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

As night descends, the overarching dome of light that is the sky gives way to the many separate sources of light that rule the urban night – headlights, streetlights, working lights, signal lights, display lights.

Roadway Composition, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt

When the level of the long wavelength street lighting matches the level of the short wavelength twilight sky, red runs through blue like rivulets of blood in icy water.

Red Feather, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Pomona Fountain, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Through reflection, the golden light of incandescence penetrates the deep blue of the gloaming.

Chelsea Blue, 2011, photo by Fred Hatt

Golden Estuary, 2009, photo by Fred Hatt

The last phase of twilight is an indigo glow that barely rises above black, a memory of light, a faint resonance, a lingering echo.

Park Road, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Central Park at Dark, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

Texture in Gray and Tan, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

I don’t usually think of my urban landscape photos as Fine Art Photography.  They’re just visual impressions, casually collected by technological means.  Unless it’s a job, I rarely go out specifically to make photographs.  If I’m going to the kind of event I think will attract a lot of shutterbugs, I’ll deliberately leave my camera at home.  But when I’m going about my business around town, provided I’m not too rushed or carrying too much other stuff, I often carry a camera with me.  Looking for pictures in the world around me is an exercise in seeing the world abstractly.  I like patterns and geometry, randomness (chaos) and design (order), elemental and optical phenomena.

Sometimes the patterns of shadows and light, when framed in the viewfinder, look like abstract expressionist paintings, especially when organic scatterings come together with rectilinear structures, as in the above image of mottled tree shadows falling across subtle bands of colored stucco and concrete.  In the picture below, the mottled pattern is light reflected from the windows of another building, a towering projection of fire in the middle of a monolithic shadow.

Light Within Shadow, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Decorative ironwork makes the stark necessity of security an occasion for creative design, and the visual layering of the black iron and the dark shadows in afternoon sunlight make a complex tessellation.

Cracquelure, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

At night, multiple light sources, of different colors, come from different directions, creating subtle patterns.

Stair Shadows, 2011, photo by Fred Hatt

Here, the sun shines through windows of beveled glass onto a tile floor perhaps inspired by Piet Mondrian.

Sunlight Through Leaded Glass, 2011, photo by Fred Hatt

A geometrical arrangement in red, beige, and dark gray frames an adumbral totem of modernity.

Cobra, 2007, photo by Fred Hatt

Another signpost is the figure on a ground of stippled gold and teal.

Park and Adelphi, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

In a shadowy corridor, a beam of light shining through a skylight gives this brass number a soft aura.

Three, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

In early morning sunlight, shadows and reflections from chrome architectural fixtures play like wild luminous graffiti across this stodgy corporate structure.

Plaza, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

I think of this one as a study in polyrhythms, as the different repeating intervals of light and dark, thick and thin, angled and perpendicular, come together.

Interval Variations, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

This composition of perspective and piebald is held together by the patch of bright orange netting in the corner.

Under a Scaffold, 2011, photo by Fred Hatt

Here, shadows of trees cast directly by the sun overlap shadows cast by the sun bouncing off of greenish glass, a vision worthy of a great abstract colorist like Joan Mitchell.

Shadows in Green and Gray, 2009, photo by Fred Hatt

Two lamps cast cones of light like sentries guarding this Romanesque arch.

Lamps and Arch, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

This porch light in the late day sun projects a robotic face on the wall.

Daytime Nightlight, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Someone tried to relieve the ennui-producing rigidity of this building façade by putting the vinyl siding on at a 45 degree angle, but the venous shadows of bare trees are what finally do the trick.

Winter Composition, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Don’t rectangles and organic branching patterns complement each other wonderfully?

Storefront, 2011, photo by Fred Hatt

In this nighttime shot, the shadow of a cluster of signs and the crosswalk markings add their jagged geometry to a well-worn street corner.

Bold Stripes, 2008, photo by Fred Hatt

On this wall beneath an iron grating, two white lights and one yellow one create a network of stripes over the masonry.

White and Yellow Light, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Light reflecting from (I think)  a bowl of water in the sun throws this ghost on an old tin ceiling, with a bit of a rainbow forming about the lower left edge.

Refractive Projection, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

The cable installers never seem much concerned about neatness, and the angled sun turns their tangle into an art brut scrawl.

Coaxial Cluster, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

The columns in this neoclassical temple are cast concrete, but sunlight and bare trees give them the veined patterns of Carrara marble.

Fluted Columns, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Here the crepuscular rays of a car’s headlights cross the sidewalk slabs from one angle, while the elongated shadow of a bicycle, cast by a sodium-vapor streetlight, cross at another angle.

Crossing Light and Dark, 2011, photo by Fred Hatt

Here the shadows of decorative ironwork dance across the treads and risers of a New York brownstone stoop.

Filigreed Steps, 2008, photo by Fred Hatt

White stripes, orange splotches, dark windows, a looming presence.

Night House, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

A tree’s narrow leaves make the shadows on this security gate, but it looks like the work of a berserk calligrapher.  The sky blue and pink paint on the wall are the colors of baby announcements, but what kind of world are they being born into?

Shadow Gate, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

The shadow of an ornate carved wooden cross at a Lithuanian church breaks as it falls across a stepped wall.

Segmented Cross, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

When multiple light sources of different colors cast shadows of a single object, the colors neutralize in the bright areas but intensify in the shadows, especially where light of only one color falls.

Tinted Lines, 2011, photo by Fred Hatt

The city is designed and constructed of plane surfaces, but without the organic forms of trees and people in motion, it would be nothing.

Sidewalk Shadows, 2011, photo by Fred Hatt

Still from "Driving Rain", 2008, video by Fred Hatt

Before I get into this week’s material, I’d like to urge my readers to click over to Museworthy, where my friend, model, and blogging mentor Claudia is celebrating four years of her entertaining, inspiring, and enlightening blog about artists, models, and her life as an artists’ model.  Every Museworthy blogaversary post has featured a photo of Claudia by me.  Check out this year’s shot at the link!  And here are the shots for years one, two, and three.

Still from "Driving Rain", 2008, video by Fred Hatt

I’m continuing to develop my own approach to watercolor painting, but I’ll wait to post on that again until I have a wider selection of examples to share.  Today’s post, though, does feature colors running in water, as well as optical phenomena of distortion and reflection, so you could see it as a continuation of themes.

Still from "Driving Rain", 2008, video by Fred Hatt

The stills here are from “Driving Rain”, a video made in the spring of 2008.  This is one of my experiments in minimal cinema, using the video camera to capture fleeting phenomena of light and motion.  We are used to seeing moving image media used to present narrative, to entertain, educate, persuade, or manipulate.  I’m interested in stripping all of that away, to see the moving image as simply an image of movement.  We appreciate still pictures for their aesthetic and formal qualities, for their ability to show us the world through another’s awakened eye.  I believe video can do the same, separate from its rhetorical dimensions.  (For other “minimal cinema” efforts, see here and here.)

Still from "Driving Rain", 2008, video by Fred Hatt

The video is nothing but a shot through the windshield of a vehicle during a pelting downpour, driving across the Williamsburg Bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan, through the streets of the Lower East Side, and up the FDR Drive along the East River waterfront of Manhattan.  There is no music, there are no voices, and there are no edits until nine minutes into the total eleven-minute running time.  Sounds boring as hell, you say?  It is, unless you give in to the film’s narrative blankness and start appreciating the peculiar complexities of the images and sounds.

Still from "Driving Rain", 2008, video by Fred Hatt

There is the mechanical beating of the windshield wipers, the deluge’s waves of white noise, and the roar of the engine.  There’s the stop-and-go flow of traffic and the relentless flow of water from the sky.  The world is seen through a refractive surface of water droplets and rivulets.  Droplets are drawn downward by gravity, shoved aside by the wiper, and blown upward by the wind.

Still from "Driving Rain", 2008, video by Fred Hatt

Because you aren’t actually driving in this monsoon, you are free to enjoy the musical phases of its various rhythmic elements, to marvel at the complexity of the movements of water on glass, to appreciate the impressionist scattering of light and color that the wet windshield introduces to the world beyond it.

Still from "Driving Rain", 2008, video by Fred Hatt

The video is embedded below (unless you receive the blog by email), but I suggest following this link to see the video in full screen and HD resolution.  If your computer or connection isn’t up to that, or if you’re reading this blog on your phone, don’t bother – just enjoy the stills.  This video was conceived with the idea of projecting it in high definition on a large screen, and it works best that way.

If you appreciate the beauty of rain as I do, you might also enjoy this earlier post, featuring still pictures of rain in the city.

Glass Bricks, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

I’m feeling a bit oversaturated these days, both by the incessant rain we’ve been having in the Northeastern states, and by the relentless media focus on the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.  If you’re interested in a long-time New Yorker’s look back at that event and its cascading effects over the past decade, look at my post from last year, “Signs in the Aftermath.”  For now, I’d rather distract myself and my readers with shiny things.

Insistent Squares, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt

I live in a city of glass and steel and plastic, colored electric lights and glittering curves and facets.  The quadrangular grid is the fundamental pattern of the city, rigid, regular, and inhuman.  But the grid is only the substructure for a culture of remarkable frenzy and chaos.  Chaos manifests in the pure optics of grids of reflective materials, as the inevitable imperfection of flat surfaces introduces dazzling distortions.  Sometimes the details of a reflected view are fragmented and repeated, something like what an insect supposedly sees with its compound eye.

Emergent Image, 2008, photo by Fred Hatt

There are layers of reflections, as when an object of stainless steel, with cylindrical curves, is viewed through a window, whose transparent and reflective qualities superimpose the space in front of the viewer over the space behind the viewer.

Modern Lamp, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

At night, metallic walls turn the various sources of light into swirling patterns like the methane turbulences of the planet Jupiter.

Steel Clouds, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Or like the op-art paintings of Victor Vasarely.

Diner Rays, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

Or like the tormented patterns of Arshile Gorky.

Plexi Deli, 2002, photo by Fred Hatt

Frenetic jabs of neon and fluorescent light put a figure in an environment of cold fire.

Silvery Gate, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt

Stainless steel facets turn architecture into abstract expressionism.

Deco Shatter, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Perhaps this view of reality, faceted, multiply reflected, distorted, layered, shows a reality that the classical image, with its hard-edged clear divisions, misses.  Objects are not separate, but exist only in a complex web of relationships.

Patchwork, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

A person exists only as a reflection of all that is around them.

Chrome Mannequin, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

Our love of order and regularity makes us build an environment of reflective planes.  The imperfection of our planes reveals the contortions we like to think we’ve transcended.

Drunken Building, 2001, photo by Fred Hatt

Our grids are ragged and jagged.

Spasmodic Geometry, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

The more we try to order our world, the more it asserts its unwillingness to be ordered.

Amoebic Grid, 2011, photo by Fred Hatt

The taillight of a car in the sunset becomes a scarlet thread in the steel quilt of a vendor’s cart.

Red Infusion, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

A new monument near Union Square depicts Andy Warhol as the artist who reflected his surroundings, mirrorlike.

Silver Andy ("The Andy Monument", by sculptor Rob Pruitt, 2011), photo by Fred Hatt

Regularity and symmetry are an illusion.  The world we move in is dynamically unbalanced.

Red Distortion, 2001, photo by Fred Hatt

Our reality is a membrane that seems to have an inside and an outside, but those two worlds are both implicit in the membrane, and their separateness is an illusion.

Winter Fruit, 2001, photo by Fred Hatt

An image like this exists only because of the conjunction of the car and the building reflected in its surface.  Light makes them one thing.

Pathfinder, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

A red printed number is on fire with orange and blue-green light.

$9, 2007, photo by Fred Hatt

New shiny, curvy, minimalist architecture exists visually only as a distorted reflection of  old, opaque, classical, decorated architecture.

Fragmentation, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

In many Asian businesses, the beckoning cat invites prosperity.  This silvery one also captures the colors and light of its surroundings.

Beckoning Cat, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

Water is also used as a decorative element in the city of glass and steel.  Its light distortions are dynamic, always in motion.

Plaza Pool, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Here mirror reflection, reflected light and shadow, and a sloped glass wall are framed by flat and rounded opaque geometric structures.

Recursion, 2011, photo by Fred Hatt

This combination of gridlike patterns and irregularly reflective surfaces is the visual essence of the twentieth century city.

Glass Loom, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Unsh, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Language is meant to flow like water.  It conveys meaning through cadence and syntax, tone and undertone.  It is the river in which our minds swim and spawn and take the bait.  Fragment and blow it up and find the weirdness in it, as you would find the odd creatures in a drop of river water seen under a microscope.

Ampersand, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

The English language is littered with mismatched characters and syllables and ideas, a jumbled rummage sale.

Hair, 2007, photo by Fred Hatt

Words on signs aren’t just signifiers, they’re physical objects that poke out, catch the light, rust, run in the rain.

Tunod Niwt, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Alphanumeric characters are wrought of our fundamental elements of form.  They become abstracted by accident, or by design.

Peace, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

All these pictures are from New York.  The city’s characteristic graphic mode is uppercase bold, and as long as a sign communicates no one has time to polish the raggedy edges.

Iquo, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Heavy fonts in all caps speak with chesty syncopation.

Clear, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt

Script fonts sing.  Big and bold script fonts are Broadway belters, pitching the tune to the cheap seats.

Grace, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

“Mosaic” is thought to be from the same root as “museum” and “muse”, but spelled the same way the word also means “having to do with Moses”, the Hebrew liberator and lawgiver.  Words in mosaic form look old and authoritative, even when they’re new.

OthS, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Words as signs cast shadows and coexist with all the manifestations of Nature.

Shops, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Big words are styled to give aesthetic force to what they signify, to convey qualities like whimsy, modernity, or sobriety.

Authority, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

Many big signs these days are overly familiar corporate branding and generic marketing, but you still see a lot of high-spirited 20th century design.

S Broiled S, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Like the babble of voices in a crowd, words on display can get lost in the layers and dissolve into multicolored noise.

Og & Cat Fo, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Sometimes I see hidden messages in segments of words.

Land Rot, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

Some words shake their booties like shameless drunks.

Rub Righteous, 2007, photo by Fred Hatt

Others proudly proclaim their dullness and conformity.

Building Mart, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Basking on glass, a word is projected on the underlying soft fabric.

Stones, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Choose me!  I am exotic in a fun and happy way.

Opt, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

I dare to be illegible but dashing, an arabesque in gridland.

Villency, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

We have everything you could want, and all of it is all lit up.

Neon Menu, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

In all the jumble and agita of the hard world, we offer you light and color and atmosphere.

Light, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Curvy swooping lines that sell a fantasy of elegant luxury contrast or merge with the jagged overlay of winter survivors.

Trump Palace, 2009, photo by Fred Hatt

Rustic and quirky means wholesome and real.

Organic, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

That’s in contrast to the traditional corporate style, respectable intimidation.

Time War, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Neon words are spelled with bent tubes of glass holding luminous gas, little labyrinths of light.

Monum, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Stone words are the traditions that stand through the centuries, defying the ephemeral.

Crucified Again, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

Shiny metal is the dazzle of the technological era.

All, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

A word can be like a vine, florid and tentacular.

Primary, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Another word embodies the neatness and assertive simplicity of the modern style, even amid a jungle of decor.

Optic, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Fun can be manufactured on an industrial scale.

Thrills Whee, 2009, photo by Fred Hatt

Silliness and idiosyncracy can be picked up in a shop.

Parties, 2001, by Fred Hatt

We can make you think of the most intimate sensory experiences while you navigate the canyon of towers.

Smell, 2001, photo by Fred Hatt

When you come to a corner, hang a 90 and keep on trucking.

Groc Ery, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Pop art is all about abstracting icons and remixing ideas in the field of commerce.

Vote, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

It takes some patina to fulfill the classical style.

Hand, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

When the power is turned off, the word means its opposite.

Open, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

Letters condensed to be readable from one angle look like broken stairsteps when seen from another angle.

School, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

In our time we are not ashamed of our desires.  They are the meaning of our lives!

Urge, 2007, photo by Fred Hatt

It is all about getting and getting more and more.

Receiving, 2007, photo by Fred Hatt

Even when it is all eroding out from under us, we shall consume.

Fresh Donuts, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

The only alternative to satiating our desires is lashing out in our anger!

Rage, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt