- Hello, I'm Beth Macmillan and welcome to "ARTEFFECTS."

In our featured segment, we meet accomplished photographer Ben Davis.

A few times a week after the sun sets, Davis takes his camera and hits the streets, often in downtown Reno and looks for people who make our community come alive.

From there, he takes to Instagram and other social media channels to share the moments that reveal Reno After Dark.

(gentle music) - I do feel like nighttime photography really shows you a side of a city that you'll never see any other way.

I think that more than a photographer, I'm just a student of curiosity, a student of learning, and I'm just fascinated by people.

My name is Ben Davis and I am the photographer behind Reno After Dark.

(gentle music) Reno After Dark is a product of the last 15, 16 years of being in town.

I immediately, as soon as we moved here, started walking around downtown Reno, shooting photos, capturing just how unique this place is.

Downtown Reno is not a very large place, but inside that small area are very unique, very quirky type of things.

You've got casinos, you've got your sunken train tracks, you've got a very diverse set of restaurants and bars and businesses and you've got the Pioneer Center, you've got the courthouse and it just produces this very unique backdrop.

(bright music) During COVID, a lot of my commercial photography work had gone away a lot like a lot of other creative people during lockdown and it was actually my wife that suggested, "Hey, why don't you go out at night "and shoot some photos, "walk around downtown like you used to?"

And I went downtown and shot photos and I immediately fell back in love with downtown Reno.

Compared to some of the other places I'd lived or visited, downtown Reno was by far the most unique.

There's a certain frame of mind you have to go out with and usually for me it's making sure that Saturday, I'm rested and I've eaten and that I'm showing up on a Saturday night downtown ready to work and ready to meet people and ready to look for those fast moving opportunities.

- Reno After Dark?

- That's right, yeah.

- There you go.

- Thank you.

- Good job, man.

- Thank you.

- Follow your content.

That's pretty cool.

- Appreciate it.

I'm looking for people having a good time, people genuinely enjoying the city, enjoying their life.

I didn't go out and party a lot in my 20s and my teens and so being able to live sort of vicariously through them is super fun.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

It's such a fast paced thing that I do that you have to be sort of really on it.

You have to be watching for those opportunities, those quick moving moments.

The Western Lights Festival the city puts on is the event that's tailor made for me and my photography.

You are taking nighttime illuminated art and then you're adding 10,000-plus people in downtown Reno.

I couldn't ask for a better event for me and then we got the treat of snow and we had kind of some shiny ground.

We had snow falling.

We had just about everything that added to and made it a very unique visual experience.

(bright music) I had somebody come up to me at Western Lights and he had on these reflective glasses and he had headphones in and you could tell he was kind of vibing to the music and it was almost after sunset.

So I wanted the photo and as soon as he looked at me as I was asking to take the photo, I saw the reflection of the glasses and I was like, "Yep, there it is.

"That's what I want."

One of the most common questions I get is how late do I stay out?

Every night is a little bit different.

Some nights I might be out until 1:00 a.m.

Some nights I might be out till 12:30.

Some nights I might be out till 4:00 a.m.. It just depends on who's out, what's happening, how long the activity on the street lasts.

I really go with the rhythm or the flow of the night.

(bright music) Coming home after a night of taking photos and knowing you've got a couple that are just really, really good, I get excited about showing that photo to people.

(gentle music) I have shot so many photos in the last six years doing this.

Looking at my server.

I think I'm almost at 3 million photos that I've taken.

I've been given so many opportunities through Reno After Dark.

I've been able to stay with and ride along with the fire department, so I get to see up close and personal what firefighters are doing.

I've been given access to the police department and being able to get to know individual cops.

It's such a privilege to be able to get to know each one of these types of people and getting to know young people, getting to know the dealers that take the same smoke breaks on different street corners and talk to them about their job.

(gentle music) It's so funny how many people tell me that like, "You captured what was really happening that night," or, "You captured me in a way that I've never seen before," or, "You captured me doing my job, "and no one's ever done that in 15 years."

(bright music) People feel comfortable telling me life stories and things that they want to have heard.

I think the thing that it's taught me is humanity.

It's that we're the same.

We want to have fun, we want to have friends.

We want to love where we live.

I think one of my favorite things about starting Reno After Dark and one of my favorite things about photography is taking something that someone has seen 100 times in their life or 1,000 times in their life, like downtown Reno, and then framing it in a way that is creative, waiting for the right color, waiting for the right sky, and then producing an image that reexamines how they see their community or it reexamines how they see people.

I feel a tremendous sense of community with Reno by doing this and I feel really privileged by the scope and the breadth that I have been able to see and photograph and document doing Reno After Dark.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Funding for "ARTEFFECTS" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli, with Bill Pearce Motors, Heidimarie Rochlin in memory of Sue McDowell, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(gentle music) (upbeat music)