Photos of Night and Fog

I was out wandering the other night and Auckland City was covered in this dense fog. I felt oh-so-very Exorcist as the spirit of Christ compelled me to take these photos. By way of disclaimer: they were taken with my HTC Magic phone and I know basically nothing about photography.
I've touched them up a little in iPhoto (I know, right!); the biggest fix was bringing the overall levels up as they were pretty dark initially. They've ended up looking pretty grainy but I kind of like that.

These lights have always reminded me of the base of space rockets taking off. I love the contrast with the sinister squat silhouette of the church.

I like the apocalyptic vibe I got when I messed with the contrast and saturation here:

One of my treasured aesthetic memories from childhood was sitting in the backseat of the family car late at night as we drove through the northland countryside, usually travelling between Dargaville or Walkworth and Auckland. I would look out across the countryside to the shadowed hills against the dark sky. There was something ineffable about the infinite obscure textures of gray and blue.

Sometimes I would look past my parents in the front seat down the length of the motorway illuminated by spotlight ochre lamps; imagine us hanging on the undercarriage of some huge spaceship as we flew by rail to a docking station. That delicious feeling of vertigo I felt as I considered the yawning maw of the sky below us.

I suppose for me there will be forever the association of being transported, safe and warm, through the night. My father would play his cassettes of the time: Rickie Lee Jones, Counting Crows, Vicka & Linda, Richard Thompson. Sometimes there would be conversation. I would ask about how some part of the world worked: the ethics of crime and punishment or New Zealand's involvement in Vietnam or the media. Mostly we were silent.

These days, I find my father's driving unnerving; he drives well but faster and more aggressively than I find comfortable. My brothers and I inherited his fahrvergnügen; I'm told my driving is good but stressful. I try and drive in a reassuring manner but it just doesn't stick.

Learning to drive is a loss of innocence: you can never sit in the backseat again.

"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory." - You Can't Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe