Last night I drove over to the Marin Headlands (the Marin County side of the Golden Gate Bridge) for the second session of my night photography class. Cold and windy, but I'd worn most everything in my closet and that, it turned out, was a good idea because it really was really, really cold.

Cat (Kat?) showed up much recovered from her adventure last night with a camera and tripod loaned to her by the instructors and she was clearly in a good mood. She's the lady who jumps in her car in Los Angeles to take a weekend class in San Francisco and a little breaking and entering apparently was not going to slow her down. I think I need to remember her example. There's no rule about learning something more than just photographic techniques in a photography class. I'm not going to drive to L.A., but there are airports and rental cars pretty much anywhere I might want to go.

I've never been out at night to the "Headlands" before. I lived in Sausalito for a number of years in the early 1970's, so I know the area, but not the section down close at the base of the bridge. At night the city and the moon and the bridge and the islands and just about everything else was incredible. Everyone scattered around the area into the dark lugging tripods, cameras, strobe lights, flashlights, thermos bottles and, for all I know, picnic baskets with late dinners and the picnic crystal. One of the instructors focused in on a large nearby rock outcropping and then walked around it popping a strobe light through colored gels, squirting it here and there with a high powered flashlight, for what? Subtle colors, maybe. Halos. Hasselblads appeared, 500C's and Super Wides.

I recognized the pattern, of course, one obsessive personality observing another. Once you truly get under the cover of something, once you truly become obsessed, people scratch their heads at the subjects you choose to shoot. Later, when you notice what they did with the light, what they did with the exposure, you say, well yes, that makes a lot of sense, but when you see it the first time out you wonder if maybe these people have been eating the wrong kind of food. A lot of what night photography seems to be about is not only opening the shutter on a particular scene and night, but the "painting" of the scene using the tools you find available from the subtle flickering match to the 2,000 watt blast of a massive strobe.

I will say both our instructors took a relatively subtle approach to their night photography. Some of the examples we looked at in the books reminded me of the 1950's color tinted photographs you might find on a postcard. Interesting neon sorts of things that once I'd seen enough of them they left me a little cold. Their work was more subtle, one specializing for the moment in black and white, the other in color. When light was added, it was added with restraint, the object being to "illuminate" (cough! cough!) rather than dominate the image.