David Baldwin (Great Britain)
I think that all of us crave something beautiful and transcendent in our lives, and for me night photography has fulfilled this need.  I was fortunate that as a boy I coincidentally developed separate interests in photography and astronomy.  My interest in night photography came about by accident, I started making star trail photographs which included some terrestrial foregrounds.   The interaction of trees, buildings, hills and sky produced effects which interested me in their own right.  I gradually changed my emphasis, away from pure astrophotography to landscapes which happened to include stars.   However,in terms of technique, I feel that it has always been a big advantage that the first textbooks I read on low light photography were written by astronomers.

I live and work in the south of England which offers many advantages for photography, not least a subtle and gentle landscape.  However, light pollution here is inescapable, so however much I deplore the light from the cities I have developed my own photographic strategies for making use of it.   This is the reason for the strong colours in my pictures - these are the results of selecting different film types according to the colour effects I want to achieve and the type of light pollution I'm dealing with.   As a Photoshop trainer I suppose I could get similar results from digital manipulation  but I wouldn't be as proud of my images. www.nightfolio.co.uk

"The stars are really as much a part of us as our beautiful rolling
countryside, our mountains, rivers, and cities. We take pictures of all
these, so why not takes pictures of the stars?"