The Night Hawks

Photographing at night is both difficult and rewarding in the work that I do. You cannot see to compose or focus the image so they are not easy to get.  Standing for hours, often on cold wet nights until dawn, in hope that a little something special is there because you cannot see it - only feel it. With exposure times ranging from 9 to 20 minutes, it can take up to an hour to get a single picture.  Even then the chances of finding something out of the ordinary are slim.

“You’d think these, or some of these, are daytime shots, with the movement of a little sleet or snow captured by a slow exposure. But the white scratches are stars, the regular curved signature representing their movement, or the planet’s movement, through space. Once you realise that, you feel a curiously alienated, cosmic chill, but just for a moment, before the thrill of the realisation catches up. The skies that are light were dark when Bill Jackson stalked these strange interzones between land and sea, sleep and consciousness, night and day. The title, ‘The Nighthawks’, has us studying the windows of caravans, sheds and houses for Hopperesque figures caught within, but there’s not a sight of a living soul. So we think instead of the nightjar, creepiest of birds, or of the night owl, he who enjoys being abroad when all others are abed. Jackson on the prowl.”