Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration | 
 enlarge | Author: Troy Paiva
Creator: Geoff Manaugh
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $13.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 46494
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 8.7 x 0.7
ISBN: 0811863387
Dewey Decimal Number: 778
EAN: 9780811863384
ASIN: 0811863387
Publication Date: June 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: H20081114205835T
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A booming subculture is on the rise: dubbed Urban Exploration, it involves sneaking into abandoned or off-limits factories, aviation "boneyards," decommissioned bases, and other derelict features of the military/industrial landscape. Troy Paiva is a foremost photographer of the UrbEx (as it's known to its devotees) phenomenon, and his distinctive blend of atmospheric night photos and lighting effects are the visual hallmarks of a scene that has drawn the increasing attention of the media and the public?as seen in recent programs on both the Discovery Channel ("Urban Explorers") and MTV ("Fear"). Illuminated by histories of the sites documented, Night Vision reveals the remarkable discoveries of a new generation of explorers.
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| Customer Reviews:
A powerful art guide highly recommended for any contemporary art collection November 8, 2008
Urban Exploration is the art of sneaking into abandoned or off-limits factors, aviation ' boneyards', and other derelict ex-military or industrial centers to photograph abandoned holdings, and NIGHT VISION captures these Urban Exploration results, comes from one of the foremost photographers of the phenomenon, and offers a blend of night photos and special lighting effects. A powerful art guide highly recommended for any contemporary art collection.
Masterful and Poignant August 28, 2008
Anyone who's followed Troy Paiva's Lost America work will know what to expect from this book. Lavishly realised images of fascinating relics, awe-inspiring sights, and Troy's personal perspective on the world of discarded infrastructure.
This is the sort of book you'll find yourself insisting friends, relatives, and workmates look through. Buy a spare copy :)
Masterfully written. Extreme quality photos August 28, 2008
Troy Paiva has knocked one out of the park with this book. The quality of the photos leave little to be desired. His writings lead the reader through an odyssey of the macabre world of abandoned night photography. The added spice of light painting creates the mood so required to complete the aura behind this type of photography.
It would be an injustice to not purchase and enjoy this book.
The color of black August 10, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I thought this collection of Paiva's night photos much better than his previous 2003 book Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West mainly because Lost was issued by Motorbooks, a publisher of picture books rather than photo books which unfortunately meant that Paiva's images were mixed together with text in rather bland spreads. Chronicle Books are much more sympathetic to creative endeavors and with 'Night Vision' they give these remarkable photos the presentation they deserve.
All the photos pages are black which certainly enhances their appeal and air of desolation but it also throws up Paiva's use of colored spots which, by now, is clearly his trademark. The five photo chapters reveal a wonderful selection of man-made abandonment. Chapter five featuring photos of the Aviation Warehouse at El Mirage, California is my favorite. To my mind nothing looks so dead and poignant as scrapped jetliners with miles of cabling, spars and struts from a half dismantled fuselage and cockpits with dust covered instrument clusters. The twenty-six photos capture all this so well.
The four other chapters cover: the abandoned Byron Hot Springs Hotel between Oakland and Stockton, California; Desert; Southern Pacific's Oakland train station in all its crumbling splendor and decommissioned military bases. This last photo section could easily make a separate book with plenty of abandoned bases across the US.
In the front of the book Paiva writes about his photo technique and adventures as a solitary nighttime snapper. He also writes a short intro to each photo chapter. The layout and printing are fine (with 175 screen) though I thought the blue captions on each page are rather hard to read in a domestic lighting environment.
'Night Vision' delivers some wonderful images in a format they deserve rather than the bland presentation that weakened the photos in 'Lost America'.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.
Work of a Master Night Photographer August 9, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Troy Paiva, whose work is handsomely reproduced in this book, is one of the acknowledged masters within the small cadre of professional night photographers. The stunning photos in this monograph demonstrate the high quality of Troy's work.
These are images of crumbling ruins in the American west ranging from abandoned military bases and resorts to the old train station in Oakland, airplane part junkyards, and erstwhile roadside attractions. If it is romantic, seedy, falling down, and visually arresting it is grist for Troy Paiva's night time mill, who previously mined this vein in his classic Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West.
Night Vision is subtitled The Art of Urban Exploration, which strikes me as a bit odd. Certainly, the fascinating photos in this book and the related stories are about the archeology of recent human culture. But they are not particularly "urban." In fact, with the exception of the wonderful series of photos of the old Oakland train station, this work shows isolated or even rural settings (you can get a sense of this even from the book's cover).
While Troy Paiva's writing is lucid and compelling, I also don't have much use for the trendy and mostly irrelevant opening essay, Desert Iliad by Geoff Manaugh.
Troy writes that he shot film until fairly recently, switching to digital in 2005 (about the time I did). I believe that most of the photos in the book were taken with digital equipment. Troy's preferred subject matter and technique differ from mine. He is looking for lost human artifacts at night, I primarily like the natural landscape. Troy's exposures are in the 2-4 minute range, and he light paints with flashlights and gels. My exposures are often far longer, and I'm not that interested in colored light painting. These differences help point out the vast vocabulary range available in night photography, and why this is an exciting area for many people.
In his description of his technique, Troy writes that mostly he doesn't post process his images much: "These captures are virtually untouched, straight out of the camera, with all the scene's warts and blemishes intact." Why Troy thinks this is a positive is unclear to me, although obviously many people share this viewpoint. (I won't go into the argument in great length here, but a digital camera is a computer with a scanner and lens attached, so why not do some of the processing on a computer with greater capabilities?)
I highly recommend this book for three different reasons:
You can learn techniques of night photography from a master.
Troy's stories of getting these photos on location in crumbling America are a great tale of adventure.
The images are stunning, and worth the price of admission on their own.
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