City Skylines

Photographing city skylines at night is a real challenge if you want to get a really good photograph. First you need to find a great vantage point to create a good composition. Then you need just the right light to balance your sky against your foreground, and not blow out all the lights. Since I have always done these with just one shot, it is a matter of shooting several shots as the sky gets progressivly darker. You can make adjustments in Photoshop or some other editing program, but you can only fix so much. The big thing in digital photography is now HDR. This stands for High Dynamic Range.  In simple terms, you take anywhere from 3 to 7 exposures and bracket with over and under exposures. This captures all the detail in the brighest lights, and all the detail in the darkest shadows. This data is then brought into Photoshop and it blends all this data together to create the image. There is a seperate software called Photomatix that processes these tpes of merged files even better than Photoshop does. I have the software now and have just started experimenting with this type of photography.

Living very close to St. Louis gives me a good skyline to practice on. These are long exposure shots were a tripod and cable release are mandatory. The worst thing about these are being down on the East St. Louis riverfront after dark. A nasty crime ridden place. I have observed river rats bigger that small dogs.

Here is a skyline scene I did of Nashville TN. from my last trip there. I was on an old bridge that had been converted to a bicycle and foot traffic only bridge. That is the Cumberland River that winds around the city of Nashville. I had to wait for the sun to get down far enough below the skyline to bring out the colors and cloud detail. These really are about patience and timing.

This is a panoramic scene of the Chicago IL. skyline all the way out to the end of Navy Pier. This is 12 vertical photos stitched together in Photoshop. I had never tried to do one of these at night. I was in Chicago for a seminar so I went out to the Adler Planetarium and shot it from there. I waited until the sun got down to the left side of the photo, but you can see the dramatic falloff of light across the city as the sun is now below the horizion at this point. I felt it was OK for a first attempt, but I need a lot more practice. If you click on any photo they will open in another window so you can see them a little better. 

Black and White Photography

When I first started learning photography in high school, I was mostly self taught, and I shot everything on B&W film. It was the cheapest, and a buddy had a dark room in his basement. We learned to develop and print our own work. Most of us older folks that learned this way still have a strong affinity for B&W prints. I on the other had much preferred color photography. I simply could not afford the film and cost of sending everything to the lab. My reasoning was I see in color, and I always felt it was more realistic in my mind. When I got back into photography and started studying some of the master photographer's works in some of my college classes, I started re-thinking my opinion of B&W photography. Now I really look at everything I photograph and consider how it might look as a B&W print. The great thing about the digital dark room is the luxury of shooting everything in color, and making the conversion in a photo editing program. They have become so sophisticated that it is a snap to get a nice B&W conversion. Now I have many of my photos as both a color, and a B&W file. Since you know how much I love old barns, many of them get converted. The photo above is actually what is called a Double-sided Corn Crib. Each side held picked corn on the ear to dry in the slatted bins. A hay loft is above the corn cribs.

This is a street scene from Nashville TN. I though it made a good conversion to B&W here. Sometimes if the light was contrasty or the exposure range to great to get everything correct in a single shot, B&W seems to save some of those for me. This rail road bridge is a favorite B&W photo that I have printed to poster size. When I saw the bridge, I was already thinking B&W before I risked my neck climbing  up to get it. This bridge is in down town Nashville on Front St. and goes across the Cumberland River. I used a super wide angle of 10mm here and got right down on the ties and rails to create this composition. It was a cloudy overcast day, and this created a even better moody feeling sky for me. 

This old barn was photographed in Cades Cove, Smokey Mountain National Park. I was not happy with the color version due to a lot of filtered sunlight hitting the barn. When I converted it to B&W, I though it made a much better shot and the filtered sunlight did not  seem to be distracting. I have a much greater love and appreication for B&W photography now that I can have my cake and it it too.

Take Care,

Scott