NIGHT OPS GRAFFITI TOWN

Saturday June 1, 2019 11:00 PM

Night Ops Graffiti Town

My crew and I agreed to embark on an unscheduled night time desert excursion. After packing up gear and supplies, at base camp, we headed out to our destination. The road was dark and the driver was unsure of the area, so we missed the drop zone a couple of times. This resulted in some laughs from everyone in the transport, and minor hazing of the driver. To save time, I took over so we could get to the fun part.

We made it to the designated staging area for our Night Ops, and geared up for the hike. Everyone had handheld light sources and water, and I carried the tripod in one hand, camera on my shoulder and the remaining gear for the photo shoot in my backpack.

Another group of explorers pulled up next to us and parked, presumably preparing for their own adventures, as we began our trek into darkness. Far from the ambient lights of the city, we were solely dependent on our artificial light sources, which we had plenty of. We also brought black lights with us, to use during the photo shoot.

We traveled on foot through the desert for just under a mile and finally reached our objective. An abandoned mine, which we had previously visited multiple times and photographed countless images of. The place is nothing short of an open air art gallery with an absolutely fascinating display of graffiti murals and street art. Our goal was to capture the beauty of these paintings under the dark, moonless night sky.

I’m pleased to report that our experiments with the black lights came out awesome, and the rest of the shoot was a success as well. Everyone had a great time, there were no injuries. Utterly exhausted from our 2 hour journey, we headed to the extraction point and breathed a collective sigh of relief as we took our seats in the transport to return to base.

Here are the photos from that adventure.