Growing the Community: We Are Now Running the Nightscaper Conference

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, or a regular anything with us, then you know how important we consider community to be. We treasure our community here—we feel so fortunate for this great group of folks bound together by our common love of going outside at night with cameras. And we love how this community has grown since it began back in 2015.

Well, that community is about to grow even more. We are absolutely thrilled to announce that we have acquired the Nightscaper Photo Conference.

This amazing event was created a few years ago by the venerable Royce Bair, the original nightscaper, who we have had the pleasure of collaborating with behind the scenes since early 2021. The first conference was held in 2019, and it quickly became an admired common ground and gathering spot not just for night photographers, but also for scientists, artists and activists who care about night skies.

We have of course been very aware of the Nightscaper Conference and community for quite some time, and have long admired and respected the spirit of everyone involved, from Royce and his staff to all the photographers and others who are so passionate about exploring dark skies. We look forward to celebrating and carrying on that spirit.

Why are we Doing This?

When Royce approached us last year with this idea, it was a match made in heaven. Or perhaps the cosmos aligned. Royce is looking to spend more time with his family, and we’re always looking for ways to grow our community and to work with even more people who love the night. So this arrangement was truly beneficial for everyone. We eagerly discussed it and agreed to accept his offer.

Gabe and I attended the 2021 Nightscaper Conference and absolutely fell in love with the community and the event. The spirit and passion of everyone we met fits so well with everything we do and with everyone we already know and love, and at the same time it brings a unique energy into the fold.

We are eager to carry forward the dedication and care that Royce put into organizing and leading the first two Nightscaper Conferences. For our part, we are bringing to bear all our skills and care to make the event even more of something to remember every year.

The Conference

This in-person conference is happening in Kanab, Utah—a hub with access to dark skies and stunning landscapes in southern Utah and northern Arizona.

We know that many of you have been itching for a reason to get out and get shooting. This is a great opportunity to scratch that itch!

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White Pocket, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. Nikon Z 6II with a Venus Optics Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D lens, light painted with two Luxli Fiddle LED panels. 13 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 12,800; 15 frames processed in Starry Landscape Stacker and stitched in PTGUI.

What’s New for the 2022 Conference?

The event is now 4 days instead of 3—April 26 to 29. We believe that having more time to spend in sessions and networking will give attendees an even richer experience.

Each session will be 1 hour long, to fully explore a topic.

We are planning to have 25 speakers this year, and 20 of them will be giving two sessions each, further allowing topics to be even more fully expressed.

The five organizers from National Parks at Night will be presenting one session each.

There will be four panel discussions to explore important topics to the community. Topic ideas are welcome and we’ll be soliciting those within the Facebook community and Instagram, so be sure to follow both.

We are adding elective image review sessions on the second, third and fourth mornings. You will be able to sign up for image reviews with participating speakers, for a reasonable fee. Further information about this will be released privately in the coming weeks to conference registrants.

Each in-person registrant will receive a custom-printed conference ring-spun shirt with glow-in-the-dark ink! You’ll be able to pick this up at the conference registration booth. And we may even make sweatshirts for pre-order!

This conference, as mentioned before, will be live and in-person in Kanab. Nestled along the southern border of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Kanab is also an amazing launching pad for adventures to Bryce, Zion, Capitol Reef and Grand Canyon national parks, and much, much more.

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Grosvenor Arch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Nikon Z 6 with a Venus Optics Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D lens, light painted with two Luxli Fiddle LED panels. 8 stacked images shot at 4 minutes, f/4, ISO 1600.

Each session will be recorded and posted online for paid registrants to watch and re-watch at their leisure for a full year. We will also offer Replays-Only for folks who can’t make it to Kanab this April.

There will not be a simulcast livestream, as we believe that focusing on the in-person experience and community is important, and although the technology to stream is available, it’s better to record and post it. However, there will be some vital speakers who cannot travel and we will be recording their presentations. We plan to simulcast those recorded sessions online so the Replays-Only ticket-holders can watch something during the conference dates.

What Will be the Same?

Even if you attended last year, there are lots of reasons to come again.

If you are already in love with the Nightscaper Conference, you’ll be happy to know that we have no interest in trying to reinvent this event. We love it the way it is. The focus on sharing, listening, skills, techniques, data and community will all be the same. We want to encourage everyone to gather to exchange ideas, to engage in spirited discussions and to go out shooting together.

Some speakers are returning, and some new voices will be presenting. See the lineup on the Speakers page of the website.

We will provide all in-person registrants with lunch each day of the conference and dinner the first evening. All other meals are your responsibility. Fortunately, Kanab has lots of wonderful places to eat!

We are using Sched to organize the sessions and physical locations. Expect this to be released closer to the conference. It will include an iOS and Android app for up-to-date info.

Tickets

The total number of in-person tickets is limited to 300 so we can all be as safe as Covid protocols can allow.

• There is a limited number of in-person early bird tickets that are first come, first served: 100 at $499 each.

• When these are gone, the remaining tickets will sell for $699 each.

For those of you who cannot travel, we are offering Replay-Only tickets to watch all sessions streaming for 1 year after the conference.

• There will be early bird Replay-Only tickets available on a first come, first served basis: 150 at $299 each.

• When those sell out, Replay-Only will be available for $349.

How do You Stay Involved?

Join us at one of the most inspiring dark sky locations in the United States. Meet other night-minded creatives and get the creative juices flowing in the classroom, as well as go out on each night to explore the dark skies and surreal landscapes of the Kanab region.

Please share the 2022 Nightscaper Conference with your friends, other astro-landscape and deep-sky photographers, and those who want to jump-start their skills. We also encourage you to share it with folks who are just getting into the craft.

Let’s come together as one night photography community to explore ideas, to explore this beautiful region, and to fall in love with the night again.

Social Media

Royce will continue to run his Instagram account @roycebairphoto, where he shares photos tagged #nightscaper from the Facebook group and elsewhere on Instagram (links below).

National Parks at Night is taking over the Nightscaper Conference Instagram account @nightscaperconference.

We will also be assuming ownership of the Nightscaper Facebook group, but have no plans to change anything, as the moderators of that group are amazing, dedicated and passionate. We love what they do and look forward to working alongside them.

Follow our Instagram.

Join our Facebook group.

Tickets are on sale now. Learn more at nightscaper.com.

Matt Hill is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. See more about his photography, art, workshops and writing at MattHillArt.com. Follow Matt on Twitter Instagram Facebook.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Banding Together: The Tradition of Community Spirit in Night Photography

The Oxford English Dictionary defines community as: “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests and goals.”

“Tribe,” “family,” “cohort,” “sisterhood,” “brotherhood,” “collective,” “fellowship” and even “gang” are all words that describe community in one sense or another. A group of people who collectively support each other for a common purpose.

There are communities dedicated to protecting the climate or endangered species, to fighting diseases, or to rallying around a politician or other public figure. There are communities of flat-earthers, bubble tea drinkers, those who like to explore abandoned mental hospitals, and even for people obsessed with identifying animal scat. If you can imagine it, there probably is a community for it.

Never has there been more need for community than in the last year. Our physical isolation—and the limited circles of people we spend time with face to face—has increased the need to connect with our communities. It’s something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit recently: the different communities I belong to, have connected with, and have drifted away from.

Anyone who is even an occasional reader of this blog, or who has attended a National Parks at Night event, will know that we place a lot of emphasis on community. Heck, unless you randomly stumbled upon this article, you are probably already a part of our community. (And to you random stumbler, come join the party!)

That said, National Parks at Night is certainly not the first community of night photographers. We’re only 6 years old, but there have been communities of night photographers dating as far back as the beginning of the 20th century.

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Some years ago while researching the early history of night photography, I came across an article in the February 1910 issue of American Photographer by Alfred H. Blake, who identified himself as the founder of the Society of Night Photographers of England. In the article, Blake was sharing the findings of his organization’s members on how to deal with some of the many technical challenges faced by early night photographers. He wrote that a key tenant of the society was to “pursue the subject as far as possible apart from all faking and double-exposing.”

It seems that because night photographs were so difficult to create successfully, there were all manner of techniques––day for night, double exposing, hand retouching—that were commonly employed to achieve the look of night photographs without actually doing the work at night. The society was formed in part to promote true night images above the fakes, but more importantly to share information and discoveries that led to better night photographs for anyone interested in the pursuit.

Despite the reputation of night photographers being solitary, introverted loners, we’ve always shared a communal camaraderie that has offered support, encouragement and appreciation of one another’s craft. My own first forays were solo ventures, but at that time, night photography was far more obscure, and there was no internet to exchange images and information. I thought that I was the only one photographing after dark, and that notion was regularly reinforced by the late night security guards and dog walkers who would question my intentions whenever I was discovered in the field.

When I found a class offered on night photography in San Francisco in 1988, I enrolled in the school and moved across the country, as it appeared to be the only class of its kind at that time. It was a fortuitous decision as it set the course of my career, and became the model for my own classes and workshops when I began teaching night photography a decade later.

The course was taught by Steve Harper, who became my mentor––as he was also to a generation of Bay Area photographers in the 1980s and 90s. In all of my other classes we were given assignments, and we went off to complete them independently. Steve’s night photography courses were different. The students went out together to shoot on location, and in between classes smaller groups would connect and go out shooting together.

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Steve Harper’s students shooting together in Yosemite National Park in 1984.

Many of us became obsessed with shooting at night, some to the point of not wanting to do anything but night work. Students would enroll in Steve’s class repeatedly, even though credit could be earned only once, until Steve eventually developed an advanced course.

The critiques were different from other classes as well. Students quickly overcame any shyness or concerns that their images might not be good enough, and we worked together to improve our techniques, watched each other’s backs in dodgy areas of South San Francisco, and celebrated one another’s images when they magically appeared in the darkroom tray.

Steve soon introduced me to Tim Baskerville, who had studied with him some years earlier, and who had caught the night photography bug himself. Tim was curating an exhibit of night photographs, and he generously included my images and those of my classmate Tom Paiva. The show was held at The Gallery Sanchez in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood, and was titled “The Nocturnes.”

A few years later that exhibit morphed into a website and became what we believe to be the world’s first online night photography community. Tim began to get emails from around the world from excited people who had previously believed that they were the only ones crazy enough to stand out in the cold and darkness with their cameras night after night. That was 30 years ago, and Tim still hosts semi-annual gatherings of honorary Nocturnes for image-sharing and -making at his studio in Mare Island, California.

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Our group from the Night Photography Conference, presented by the Nocturnes and Mono Lake Workshops in August 2006.

Today, with the proliferation of the internet and social media, there are so many opportunities for sharing images and ideas that were completely unfathomable just a few short years ago. Sites like Flickr and 500px have long since yielded in popularity to Instagram and Facebook, and the next generation has moved on to TikTok and Twitch, but all are ways to connect and share. I for one long for a time when we can reconnect with our communities face to face, to hug and to shake hands, and to look over a friend’s shoulder at her or his laptop without a care other than whether or not I have garlic breath.

Still, we are truly fortunate to live in a time with so many ways to connect and to relate to our fellow humans, whichever tribe or tribes we belong to––be it bubble tea aficionados or night photographers. It’s easy to hibernate in our home-cocoons, and to attempt to ride out the storm alone, but even in quarantine, or semi-quarantine, remember that there is a thriving community of night photographers at the ready to encourage, inspire or nudge you along, and others who may need the same from you.

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Just a few of the National Parks at Night workshop groups—a great community of night photographers 6 years and 500-plus members strong. Many stay in touch (and share photos, arrange night photography shoots, etc.) via a private group on Facebook.

It seems fitting that National Parks at Night is holding our first Night Photography Summit in the year that marks the 30th anniversary of the Nocturnes. That show was a seminal moment for me, and I know that it was for Tom and especially Tim as well.

For me personally it is a confirmation, a justification, an assertion that what we do is important, has meaning, and brings people together to share a common love of the magic that happens when a shutter clicks in the dark.

Lance Keimig is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. He has been photographing at night for 30 years, and is the author of Night Photography and Light Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark (Focal Press, 2015). Learn more about his images and workshops at www.thenightskye.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT