Friday night was a pretty busy night for me. I started at 10 pm and got back home at 2 am. I had three nightlife shoots to complete, and for some reason, none of them went smoothly. It just wasn’t my night for easy shoots, I guess.
I don’t want to complain about things, because the three shoots were not horrible. Nothing crazy happened, like a broken flash or a fight with a drunk person. It was really just a bunch of small stuff. Anyway, the point is that I was feeling beat down and exhausted by the end of the third shoot. I just wanted to go home.
Of course, I knew there was one thing that always makes me feel better…
For some reason, driving through the streets of Dallas late at night with the windows down feels SOOOOO good. It has to be night, hopefully late enough that the streets are almost empty. And, obviously, it needs to be windows down weather. Tonight it was 78 degrees out. And most importantly, I think it needs to be near downtown Dallas.
I’ve driven a lot of cities at night, and none of them brings me peace like Dallas does. Maybe I’m biased, since I grew up here. I don’t know… All I know is that a rough night can turn into a perfect night pretty quick. All it takes is a mile or two.
Now for the fun part: In the above shot, I was going the speed limit, which was around 40 miles per hour. But what about the bottom shot? Even though it looks faster, it was still just 40 mph. That’s the exciting thing about photography… All I had to do was drag the shutter and the lines start streaking across the image, like I’m blasting down the road at 70 mph or something!
Oh, and don’t try this at home. I was not looking through the viewfinder while driving, and there were no other cars around me. I had the camera set up near me, but I was able to drive like normal with nothing blocking the car’s controls. I can just imagine someone trying to shoot and drive at the same time and crashing into a pole because they had the camera up to their eye.
Don’t do it!!! Or, don’t do it, unless you can find a way to rig the camera out of the way of normal driving like I did.