Since I can remember, I have loved sodium-vapor light: the orange low-intensity glow from municipal lamps that for me recalls the warmth of a sunset but in a sea of night’s blackness: a concentrated sunset, a sunset threatened by oblivion.
The other night, taking photos of sodium lights, I recalled a possible explanation: my father used to tell me stories when I was very young about a telephone pole / streetlamp that faced our house in Mississippi. I remember little except that, incredibly, he would make them up as he went, narrating adventures in which I would confront some danger and would require the assistance of this telephone pole, which could magically move and bash foes into the ground. In one, I think he saved me from a demon wearing a cloak.
If I recall correctly, this pole looked a bit as though it had a face, at least to a child, and while I am not sure whether it was sodium vapor I do suspect that my fondness for such lights is at least connected to these memories.
I also find it extraordinary and moving to imagine my father twenty years ago, tellings such stories -of a boy and his sidekick / protector, the magic telephone pole from Bay St. Louis- to his son on summer nights, a small act of creation, a tiny narrative gift of remarkable ingenuity and invention.
just an fyi for photographers/gaffers:
high-pressure sodium is around 2k-2.2kK with a touch of pink (drop full cto and half straw and 1/2 minus-green if you want to match on a 5.5kK source, or quarter cto and eighth straw and the minus-green on tungsten. usually gets it pretty close). incandescent balance on a digital camera is around 2.8-3.2kK, depending upon the model. daylight balance is usually 5k-5.5kK.
and likewise for mercury vapor lamps: full and eighth ctb on the tungsten and 1/4 plus-green, and eighth ctb and 1/4 or 1/8 plus-green for hmi and kino flo.
take it from someone that’s done a lot of new york city exterior-night shoots.
